1 Libguestfs is a library for accessing and modifying guest disk images.
2 Amongst the things this is good for: making batch configuration
3 changes to guests, getting disk used/free statistics (see also:
4 virt-df), migrating between virtualization systems (see also:
5 virt-p2v), performing partial backups, performing partial guest
6 clones, cloning guests and changing registry/UUID/hostname info, and
9 Libguestfs uses Linux kernel and qemu code, and can access any type of
10 guest filesystem that Linux and qemu can, including but not limited
11 to: ext2/3/4, btrfs, FAT and NTFS, LVM, many different disk partition
12 schemes, qcow, qcow2, vmdk.
14 Libguestfs provides ways to enumerate guest storage (eg. partitions,
15 LVs, what filesystem is in each LV, etc.). It can also run commands
16 in the context of the guest. Also you can access filesystems over FTP.
18 Libguestfs is a library that can be linked with C and C++ management
19 programs (or management programs written in OCaml, Perl, Python, Ruby or Java).
20 You can also use it from shell scripts or the command line.
22 Libguestfs was written by Richard W.M. Jones (rjones@redhat.com).
23 For discussion please use the fedora-virt mailing list:
25 https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-virt
29 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
31 - recent QEMU >= 0.10 with vmchannel support
32 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2009-02/msg01042.html
38 - Augeas (http://augeas.net/)
40 - perldoc (pod2man, pod2text) to generate the manual pages and
43 - (Optional) Readline to have nicer command-line editing in guestfish.
45 - (Optional) OCaml if you want to rebuild the generated files, and
46 also to build the OCaml bindings
48 - (Optional) local Fedora mirror
50 - (Optional) Perl if you want to build the perl bindings
52 - (Optional) Python if you want to build the python bindings
54 - (Optional) Ruby, rake if you want to build the ruby bindings
56 - (Optional) Java, JNI, jpackage-utils if you want to build the java
59 Running ./configure will check you have all the requirements installed
64 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
66 Then make the daemon, library and root filesystem:
68 ./configure [--with-mirror=URI]
71 Use the optional --with-mirror parameter to specify the URI of a local
72 Fedora mirror. See the discussion of the MIRROR parameter in the
73 febootstrap(8) manpage.
75 Finally run the tests:
79 If everything works, you can install the library and tools by running
80 these commands as root:
86 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
88 If you are using x86-64, then by default the configure script will
89 look for qemu-kvm (KVM support). You will need a reasonably recent
90 processor for this to work. KVM is much faster than using plain QEMU.
92 You may also need to enable KVM support for non-root users, by following
95 http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/FAQ#How_can_I_use_kvm_with_a_non-privileged_user.3F
97 On some systems, this will work too:
101 On some systems, the chmod will not survive a reboot, and you will
102 need to make edits to the udev configuration.
105 Notes on cross-architecture support
106 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
108 At the moment we basically don't support cross-architecture or
109 32-on-64. This limits what is possible for some guests. Filesystem
110 operations and FTP export will work fine, but running commands in
111 guests may not be possible.
113 To enable this requires work for cross-architecture and 32-on-64
114 support in febootstrap, fakeroot and fakechroot.
116 The daemon/ directory contains its own configure script. This is so
117 that in future we will be able to cross-compile the daemon.
121 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
123 Having a local Fedora mirror makes a massive difference to the time it
124 takes to build and rebuild initramfs images.
126 Failing that, use squid to cache yum downloads, but read this first:
127 https://lists.dulug.duke.edu/pipermail/yum/2006-August/009041.html
128 (In brief, because yum chooses random mirrors each time, squid doesn't
129 work very well with default yum configuration. To get around this,
130 choose a Fedora mirror which is close to you, set this with
131 './configure --with-mirror=[...]', and then proxy the whole lot
132 through squid by setting http_proxy environment variable).
134 You will also need to substantially increase the squid configuration
136 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Using_Mock_to_test_package_builds#Using_Squid_to_Speed_Up_Mock_package_downloads
138 IntelligentMirror is another possibility, although I couldn't get it
142 Copyright and license information
143 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
145 Copyright (C) 2009 Red Hat Inc.
147 The library is distributed under the LGPLv2+. The programs are
148 distributed under the GPLv2+. Please see the files COPYING and
149 COPYING.LIB for full license information.