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guestfs-release-notes - libguestfs Release Notes

RELEASE NOTES FOR LIBGUESTFS 1.6

These release notes only cover the differences from the previous stable/dev branch split (1.4.0). For detailed changelogs, please see the git repository, or the ChangeLog file distributed in the tarball.

New features
- Use a new method for creating and caching the appliance. This
greatly improves the performance of libguestfs, often by a factor
of x 4 to x 5.
- Support for guest inspection (like virt-inspector) via the ordinary
API and all language bindings. 'guestfish -i' option is as a side-
effect much quicker.
- virt-inspector and core inspection API can now detect guests running:
Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Windows, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS,
Scientific Linux, Gentoo, Pardus, Arch Linux, MeeGo.
- Support for LUKS whole-disk encryption in guests.
- PHP bindings.
- Progress messages (and progress bars in guestfish and virt-resize)
for certain long-running operations.
- virt-df is now much more efficient. Use '--one-per-guest' to restore
the old per-guest isolation behaviour.
- guestfish 'copy-in' and 'copy-out' commands for copying files and
directories recursively in and out of the guest.
- guestfish 'hexedit' command for doing binary edits to devices and
files.
- Change guestfish -i syntax to allow commands to be specified on the
command line (retaining backwards compatibility).
- guestfish '-d <domain>' for adding disks from libvirt domains.
- guestfish '-N' option supports several new prepared disk image types:
lvfs : disk with LV formatted with filesystem
lv : disk with LV
bootroot : boot+root
bootrootlv : boot and root on LV
- guestfish 'more' and 'edit' commands now work with arbitrary files.
- guestfish '--echo-keys' option allows you to echo keys/passphrases
while typing them.
- guestmount now supports -a / -d / -i options, like guestfish.
- Use virtio-serial for communications with the appliance. This
also has a major performance benefit.
- virt-edit '-b' option to create a backup of edited files.
- virt-edit '-e' option for non-interactive edits to files.
- Ability to capture core dumps from the appliance (thanks Matthew Booth).
- virt-rescue now shuts down cleanly (thanks Matthew Booth).
- virt-rescue now has a --network option to enable network access.
- virt-resize can now handle guests which use GPT partition table format.
- virt-resize has better support for shrinking guests.
- virt-resize supports qcow2-format guests.
- $TMPDIR can be used to override almost all temporary directory usage.
- OCaml users can use an alternate OO-style of coding, eg. g#launch ()
- The API supports calls which take optional parameters, eg.
$g->add_drive_opts ("disk", readonly => 1);
- Trace output now escapes and shortens large strings (thanks
Matthew Booth).
- Autosync is now on by default, resulting in more reliable behaviour
when the handle is closed.
- virt-df --uuid option allows you to follow a domain across migration
and renaming.
- Translations of manual pages.

Security
- CVE-2010-3851 libguestfs: missing disk format specifier when adding a disk
https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2010-October/msg00036.html
This is comprehensively fixed in this release, and the fix will be
backported to the other stable branches after more testing.
- virt-inspector no longer relies on untrusted guest code to list
applications in some guests.

New APIs
download-offset, file-architecture, findfs-label, findfs-uuid,
inspect-os, inspect-get-arch, inspect-get-distro,
inspect-get-filesystems, inspect-get-major-version,
inspect-get-minor-version, inspect-get-mountpoints,
inspect-get-product-name, inspect-get-type, is-blockdev, is-chardev,
is-fifo, is-lv, is-socket, is-symlink, list-filesystems, luks-add-key,
luks-close, luks-format, luks-format-cipher, luks-kill-slot,
luks-open, luks-open-ro, lvm-clear-filter, lvm-canonical-lv-name,
lvm-set-filter, part-to-dev, pread-device, pwrite-device,
upload-offset

Internals
- Use size_t for loop iterators.
- Refactor the library code into separate files.
- Refactor the generator code into separate files.
- Generate guestfish commands.
- guestfish & guestmount options processing is unified.
- Protocol changes:
error message size increased to 64K
send errno to library
- Add 'make bindist' to make a binary distribution.
- Cleaner behaviour under valgrind.
- More testing of the guestfish command line options and libvirt
integration.
- The Perl inspection code is no longer used by any of the tools.

Bugs fixed
- 646822 libguestfs trace mode should not print long binary strings
- 646821 virt-df should have --uuid option
- 646432 /dev/mapper paths should not be returned from guestfs_mountpoints
- 643624 libguestfs tools documentation should describe how to quote guest domain names from shell
- 642934 No way to specify disk format when adding a disk to libguestfs
- 642933 guestfs_list_filesystems should be used in all possible places
- 642932 guestmount options should match guestfish options
- 642930 virt-inspector (Sys::Guestfs::Lib) should use C inspection APIs
- 642929 C inspection code should ignore /dev/fd* in /etc/fstab
- 642826 virt-resize converts any other image format to raw without notifying user, instructions do not account for this
- 640961 Document that grub-install might be needed for old Linux guests after virt-resize
- 639986 virt-df --csv does not properly quote " in libvirt domain names
- 639405 Interrupted cached appliance creation leaves libguestfs unusable
- 638901 Appliance filename should not contain repository name
- 638899 /dev/mapper paths should not be returned from C inspection APIs
- 636918 Updates to Spanish translation
- 636061 [abrt] guestfish-1.2.11-1.fc12: malloc_consolidate: Process /usr/bin/guestfish was killed by signal 11 (SIGSEGV)
- 635969 glob echo mkfs ext2 /dev/vd[b-t]1 prints garbage
- 634246 guestfs_part_get_parttype returns "loop" when run against a partition, LV or filesystem
- 633766 virt-resize --shrink fails
- 633357 Updates to Spanish translation
- 633096 virt-resize calculates block device size incorrectly, doesn't work with qcow2 target
- 629593 Dutch translation added
- 627556 Updates to Spanish translations of libguestfs
- 626843 Updates to Spanish translations
- 619793 [RFE] Need a way to determine if a particular block device is a logical volume
- 618556 virt-rescue return none zero value when exit
- 617200 mount operation failed and hung on some images which running in read-only mode
- 610880 libguestfs should set broader read perms on tmpdir, so works in some situations when executed with umask 077
- 599503 document that mkmountpoint and umount-all cannot be mixed
- 571714 Running virt-df on disk image relabels it, so qemu can no longer write to it.
- 502533 Updated Polish translation of libguestfs

SEE ALSO

guestfs-examples(1), guestfs-faq(1), guestfs-performance(1), guestfs-recipes(1), guestfs-testing(1), guestfs(3), guestfish(1), http://libguestfs.org/

AUTHOR

Richard W.M. Jones

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) 2009-2023 Red Hat Inc.

LICENSE

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.

BUGS

To get a list of bugs against libguestfs, use this link: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/buglist.cgi?component=libguestfs&product=Virtualization+Tools

To report a new bug against libguestfs, use this link: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/enter_bug.cgi?component=libguestfs&product=Virtualization+Tools

When reporting a bug, please supply: