| guestfs-release-notes-1.20(1) | Virtualization Support | guestfs-release-notes-1.20(1) |
guestfs-release-notes - libguestfs Release Notes
These release notes only cover the differences from the previous stable/dev branch split (1.18.0). For detailed changelogs, please see the git repository, or the ChangeLog file distributed in the tarball.
libvirt and sVirt (SELinux confinement)
You can optionally use libvirt to launch and manage the backend appliance by:
SVirt (SELinux confinement) is used to secure the libguestfs appliance, if the libvirt backend is selected.
virtio-scsi, larger number of drives, hotplugging
Virtio-scsi is now used by default, if it is available. This greatly increases the number of drives that can be added to a single libguestfs handle (up to 255).
You can now hotplug drives (add and remove drives after launch).
Libguestfs can now handle > 25 disks, in all APIs, tools and tests.
You can label drives when adding them, then refer to them by label (/dev/disk/guestfs/LABEL) instead of having to use device names (/dev/sda).
new library features
POSIX Access Control Lists (ACLs) and Linux filesystem capabilities can now be read and written through the API.
Windows Dynamic Disks are now supported. The metadata can only be read (volumes cannot be modified or created). However the data/filesystems in the volumes themselves can be mounted, read and written (Matthew Booth).
Hivex (Windows Registry editing) is now directly supported through the API, making reading or editing the Windows Registry much more efficient.
Several libguestfs APIs were reimplemented so they no longer have any limits on output. The reimplemented APIs are: "guestfs_cat", "guestfs_find", "guestfs_read_file", "guestfs_read_lines", "guestfs_write", "guestfs_write_append", "guestfs_lstatlist", "guestfs_lxattrlist", "guestfs_readlinklist", "guestfs_ls".
virt tools
"guestfish touch 'win:c:\new_file'" now works as expected.
"guestfish" has a new --network option, which enables the user network in libguestfs.
You can set "GUESTFISH_PS1" to use fancy prompts in "guestfish".
"rsync", "ssh", "less" and "lrzip" commands are now available in virt-rescue. In addition, "rsync" can be used through the API for doing incremental copies.
"virt-sparsify" uses qcow2 v3 for increased efficiency.
"virt-sysprep" enhancements:
"virt-make-fs" can now create virtual floppy disks (VFDs).
"guestmount" has a --pid-file option, which can be used to avoid a race condition between unmounting the filesystem and using the underlying disk image.
language bindings
Full-featured Lua bindings have been added in this release (thanks to Jerome Vuarand for many suggestions).
In Ruby, optional arguments hash is optional.
In Python, optional arguments now don't use special "sentinel" values, so any integer can be passed as an optional argument.
Erlang bindings now come with examples and tests.
Erlang bindings now handle 64 bit integer parameters correctly.
The automated 'bindtests' now test for 64 bit cleanliness in parameter passing. Several bugs in the bindings were found and fixed as a result.
Better handling of blocking and non-blocking functions should make libguestfs calls more efficient.
inspection
Windows guests with unlimited-sized Registries are now supported. By adding the hivex API to the libguestfs API, it is much more efficient and easier to inspect and modify the Windows Registry in guests.
Better support for SuSE guests (Olaf Hering).
Return the architecture of installed applications (John Eckersberg).
Windows 8 is now supported.
Fedora 18 is now supported.
Inspection of ISOs/CDs/DVDs can now use the libosinfo database.
ports
Libguestfs without the appliance can be compiled on Mac OS X (Masami HIRATA).
RHEL 5 is now explicitly supported through the 'oldlinux' branch in upstream git.
PowerPC 64 bit is now supported. Also libguestfs has been examined for endianness bugs and these have been fixed.
daemon
A man page for the daemon (guestfsd(8)) is included.
guestfish history file
The $HOME/.guestfish history file is now created with 0600 permissions (instead of 0644 before) so it is no longer world readable.
CVE-2012-2690
Old versions of both "virt-edit" and the "guestfish" "edit" command created a new file containing the changes but did not set the permissions, etc of the new file to match the old one. The result of this was that if you edited a security sensitive file such as /etc/shadow then it would be left world-readable after the edit.
This issue was assigned CVE-2012-2690, and is fixed in libguestfs ≥ 1.16.
For further information, see https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=788642
acl-delete-def-file acl-get-file acl-set-file canonical-device-name cap-get-file cap-set-file create-flags device-index disk-has-backing-file disk-format disk-virtual-size filesystem-available fill-dir fstrim get-cachedir get-libvirt-requested-credentials get-libvirt-requested-credential-prompt get-libvirt-requested-credential-challenge get-libvirt-requested-credential-defresult get-tmpdir hivex-close hivex-commit hivex-node-add-child hivex-node-children hivex-node-delete-child hivex-node-get-child hivex-node-get-value hivex-node-name hivex-node-parent hivex-node-set-value hivex-node-values hivex-open hivex-root hivex-value-key hivex-value-type hivex-value-utf8 hivex-value-value inspect-list-applications2 (John Eckersberg) list-ldm-volumes list-ldm-partitions ldmtool-create-all ldmtool-diskgroup-disks ldmtool-diskgroup-name ldmtool-diskgroup-volumes ldmtool-remove-all ldmtool-scan ldmtool-scan-devices ldmtool-volume-hint ldmtool-volume-partitions ldmtool-volume-type ls0 max-disks mke2fs (Wanlong Gao) mklost-and-found mkswap [added label and uuid optional arguments] mktemp (Wanlong Gao) nr-devices parse-environment parse-environment-list rm-f rsync rsync-in rsync-out set-cachedir set-libvirt-supported-credentials set-libvirt-requested-credential set-tmpdir shutdown [backported to 1.16 and 1.18] tar-in [added compress flag] tar-out [added compress, numericowner, excludes flags] umount [added force and lazy optional arguments] utsname xfs-admin (Wanlong Gao) xfs-growfs (Wanlong Gao) xfs-info (Wanlong Gao) xfs-repair (Wanlong Gao)
In the C API only:
guestfs_push_error_handler guestfs_pop_error_handler
qemu ≥ 1.1 is required (≥ 1.2 preferred).
febootstrap ≥ 3.20 is required.
libvirt is optional, but if you want to use the new libvirt backend for launching the appliance then libvirt ≥ 0.10.2 would be required.
Coverity has been run over the complete codebase, and many issues fixed (thanks Ondrej Vasik, Kamil Dudka).
Functions which previously had no optargs can now be converted to ones with optargs, making extending the API much more flexible. Source and binary backwards compatibility is preserved for users of the API.
The way that libguestfs APIs and structures are represented in the generator has changed to use an OCaml struct instead of a tuple. This makes generator descriptions more flexible and easier to understand. For details see commits 39d1a7db and eb185eef.
Separation of the library code into more files:
POD (documentation) is now generated using a rewritten Perl program instead of pod2* + shell scripts.
Man pages now contain stable dates (Hilko Bengen).
Skipped tests now exit with code 77, so they appear as "SKIP:" in "make check" output.
The parallel mount-local test has been rewritten in C (RHBZ#838081).
Ruby 1.8.5 is now supported (though Ruby ≥ 1.9 is preferred).
Perl bindings can be disabled via "./configure --disable-perl" (Wulf C. Krueger). Note that Perl is still required in order to build libguestfs.
Java bindings are now enabled/disabled using "./configure --with-java" or "./configure --without-java" (Wulf C. Krueger).
New configure options "./configure --enable-code-profiling" and "./configure --enable-code-coverage".
Multiple fixes to use of 64 bit integers in language bindings.
The appliance backend now uses sgabios instead of vgabios (Dan Berrange).
The "./run" script now sets enough environment variables that you can run OCaml, Python, Ruby, Java, GJS, Erlang, Lua programs.
"./run --test" flag for running tests with minimal output. It also prints the time taken to run each test.
The "./run" script now builds up paths cumulatively, meaning that you can use "./run" twice, or use the libguestfs and libvirt "./run" scripts together.
You can extract a list of external commands required by the daemon, making building the appliance on certain distros easier (Olaf Hering).
The "virt-rescue" command is now tested during "make check".
The generator now removes unused generated files. This helps when going back and forth with git rebase, git bisect, etc.
Tests now run in a separate toplevel "tmp/" directory in the source. This allows the directory to be labelled for SELinux (sVirt), and also makes it easier to clean up.
"make syntax-check" now works to a greater extent, and many problems in the main code that were found by syntax-check have been fixed (thanks Jim Meyering).
Emacs mode (-*- foo -*-) has been added to generated files.
Progress bar output is now sent to /dev/tty so it doesn't end up in the regular output of the program. virt-resize and virt-sparsify now suppress progress bars if stdout is not a tty.
There is now a "./configure --without-libvirt" option. This is useful for testing that the code still compiles without libvirt.
There is now an internal mini-library for running commands. This allows us to redirect errors from external commands into events.
Code for handling temporary directories and the appliance cache was completely overhauled.
Code for temporarily ignoring/disabling errors now looks like this:
guestfs_push_error_handler (g, NULL, NULL); guestfs_mkdir (g, "/foo"); /* We don't care if this fails. */ guestfs_pop_error_handler (g);
The "tests/extra" directory has gone. The "extra tests" are now split into separately runnable targets, such as "make check-valgrind". Use "make help" to get a summary of the targets.
The "lpj" option is passed to the appliance kernel when using TCG. This should improve clock stability (thanks Marcelo Tosatti, Olaf Hering).
guestfs-examples(1), guestfs-faq(1), guestfs-performance(1), guestfs-recipes(1), guestfs-testing(1), guestfs(3), guestfish(1), http://libguestfs.org/
Richard W.M. Jones
Copyright (C) 2009-2020 Red Hat Inc.
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.
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:
| 2021-01-05 | libguestfs-1.44.0 |