Manpages

nbd_opt_list_meta_context(3) can now be called without having negotiated structured replies (Eric Blake).

nbd_set_strict_mode(3) has a new "LIBNBD_STRICT_PAYLOAD" flag which can be used to control whether send oversize messages, in order to test servers (Eric Blake).

C API pointer parameters that cannot be NULL are now annotated with "attribute((nonnull))" (if the compiler supports it) so that you will get a compile time warning if they are used improperly (thanks Eric Blake).

C APIs which allocate are now marked with "attribute((malloc))" and similar attributions to improve static analysis of programs using libnbd (Eric Blake).

C APIs expressing flag values now use unsigned types, removing some undefined corner-cases with bitwise math on signed ints. This change is API and ABI backwards compatible. (Eric Blake)

Tools
New nbdublk(1) program which is used to create a Linux /dev/ublkb<N> block device from an NBD server (thanks Ming Lei).

nbdinfo(1) now has colorized output (use --no-color to disable).

nbdinfo has new --is tls and --can structured-reply options to let you test for these features on the server (Eric Blake).

nbdcopy(1) now writes progress messages to stderr (previously they were written to /dev/tty). This makes it consistent with other tools like dd. (Eric Blake).

nbdsh(1) options -c and -u can now be interleaved, making it easier to toggle optional URI features (Eric Blake).

Language bindings
Documentation for the OCaml bindings now includes parameter names.

The OCaml bindings now return OCaml error values in exceptions instead of raw C errno numbers.

OCaml bindings now support nbd_aio_connect(3) which uses the sockaddr type directly.

The Python bindings now have an explicit "h.close()" method. Letting the handle go out of scope still works for closing the handle, but now you have the choice to explicitly close the handle before it goes out of scope. If you try to use the handle after closing it, a new "nbd.ClosedHandle" exception will be thrown.

The Python bindings now provide a contextlib decorated function, so you can write the more natural "with nbd.nbd() as h: ..."

Tests
Wider CI coverage (Eric Blake).

Other improvements and bug fixes
The state machine can now cope with and recover from some bad structured reply messages and unknown cookies sent by the server (Eric Blake).

The library is now annotated with "-z nodelete", preventing it from being "really" unloaded when you call dlclose(3). This is the only way to prevent a crash in multi-threaded code. See commit 368e3d0d5a887 for details.

Improve debugging when the handle enters the %DEAD state.

The library is now much more POSIX-compliant and resilient when running subcommands, no longer relying on quirks of the glibc implementation of execvp and other non-async-signal-safe functions (Laszlo Ersek).

Source files reformatted to use ≤ 80 columns (Laszlo Ersek).

Build
Fix build on Alpine Linux + musl which declares "AF_VSOCK" but does not define the associated structures (Eric Blake).

Python distutils, deprecated in Python ≥ 3.10, has been replaced by sysconfig (thanks Miro Hrončok).

SEE ALSO

libnbd(3).

AUTHORS

Daniel P. Berrangé
Eric Blake
Laszlo Ersek
Ming Lei
Richard W.M. Jones

COPYRIGHT

Copyright Red Hat

LICENSE

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

This library 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 Lesser General Public License for more details.

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