1 Libguestfs is tools and a library for accessing and modifying guest
2 disk images. For more information see the home page:
6 For discussion, development, patches, etc. please use the mailing
9 http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/libguestfs
13 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
15 Running ./configure will check you have all the requirements installed
20 A useful tip is to run:
22 yum-builddep libguestfs
24 which will install all build dependencies automatically. If that is
25 successful, you don't need to bother with the rest of this section.
29 Take a look at the debian/control file and install everything listed
30 in "Build-Depends". If that is successful, you don't need to bother
31 with the rest of this section.
33 The full requirements are described below.
35 For basic functionality and the C tools:
37 - look at appliance/packagelist.in and install as many of the packages
38 that apply to your distro as possible
40 - recent QEMU >= 0.13 (0.14 or later is better) with virtio-serial support
42 - kernel >= 2.6.34 with virtio-serial support enabled.
44 - virtio-block and virtio-net drivers should be compiled into your
45 host kernel (strictly speaking this is optional, but you will have
46 to make complex changes to the ./configure command line to get it
47 to work if you don't have virtio)
49 - febootstrap >= 3.3 (it is best to use the latest version)
51 Notes: (1) febootstrap 2.x WILL NOT WORK
52 (2) febootstrap 3.x is distro-independent, and is required on
53 Debian and other distros as well as Fedora
55 - XDR, rpcgen (on Linux these are provided by glibc)
61 - pcre (Perl Compatible Regular Expressions C library)
63 - genisoimage (NOT mkisofs any more)
65 - hivex >= 1.2.7 (http://libguestfs.org/download) (optional)
67 - libmagic (the library that corresponds to the 'file' command) (optional)
73 - libconfig (optional)
75 - augeas >= 0.5.0 (http://augeas.net/) (optional)
77 - Berkeley DB 'db_dump' and 'db_load' utilities
78 (db4-utils or db4.X-util or similar) (optional)
80 - perldoc (pod2man, pod2text, pod2html) to generate the manual pages
81 and other documentation.
83 - Readline to have nicer command-line editing in guestfish (optional)
85 - xmllint (part of libxml2) to validate virt-inspector
86 RELAX NG schema (optional)
88 - OCaml if you want to rebuild the generated files, and
89 also to build the OCaml bindings (optional)
91 - po4a for translating manpages and POD files.
92 This is optional when compiling from the tarball, but mandatory
93 if you compile from git.
95 - getfacl, getfattr libraries and programs (optional)
97 To build FUSE support (guestmount):
99 - FUSE libraries and kernel module (optional)
101 To build virt-resize:
103 - OCaml PCRE bindings (ocaml-pcre) (optional)
105 To build language bindings:
107 - Perl if you want to build the perl bindings (optional)
109 - Python if you want to build the python bindings (optional)
111 - Ruby, rake if you want to build the ruby bindings (optional)
113 - Java, JNI, jpackage-utils if you want to build the java
116 - GHC if you want to build the Haskell bindings (optional)
118 - PHP, phpize if you want to build the PHP bindings (optional)
120 To build the Perl tools:
122 - Perl Sys::Virt module (optional)
124 - Perl Win::Hivex module (optional)
126 - Perl Pod::Usage module (optional)
128 - Perl Test::More module (from perl Test::Simple) (optional)
130 - Perl String::ShellQuote module (optional)
132 - perl-libintl for translating perl code (optional)
136 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
138 Then make the daemon, library and root filesystem:
143 Finally run the tests:
147 If everything works, you can install the library and tools by running
148 this command as root:
152 You can run guestfish, guestmount and the virt tools without needing
153 to install, using the "run" script in the top directory. This script
154 sets up some environment variables. For example:
156 ./run ./fish/guestfish [usual guestfish args ...]
158 ./run ./inspector/virt-inspector [usual virt-inspector args ...]
160 If you are already in the fish/ subdirectory, then the following
161 command will also work:
163 ../run ./guestfish [...]
165 You can also make a symlink (note: NOT a hard link) from your $PATH to
169 ln -s ~/libguestfs/run libguestfs-run
171 libguestfs-run ./inspector/virt-inspector [...]
173 You can also run the C programs under valgrind like this:
175 ./run valgrind [valgrind opts...] ./cat/virt-cat [virt-cat opts...]
177 This also works with sudo (eg. if you need root access for libvirt or
178 to access a block device):
180 sudo ./run ./cat/virt-cat -d LinuxGuest /etc/passwd
184 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
186 By far the most common problem is with broken or incompatible
189 Different versions of qemu have problems booting the appliance for
190 different reasons. This varies between versions of qemu, and Linux
191 distributions which add their own patches.
193 If you find a problem, you could try using your own qemu built from
194 source (qemu is very easy to build from source), with a 'qemu
195 wrapper'. Qemu wrappers are described in the guestfs(3) manpage.
199 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
201 By default the configure script will look for qemu-kvm (KVM support).
202 You will need a reasonably recent processor for this to work. KVM is
203 much faster than using plain Qemu.
205 You may also need to enable KVM support for non-root users, by following
208 http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/FAQ#How_can_I_use_kvm_with_a_non-privileged_user.3F
210 On some systems, this will work too:
214 On some systems, the chmod will not survive a reboot, and you will
215 need to make edits to the udev configuration.
219 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
221 On my machines I can usually rebuild the appliance in around 3
222 minutes. If it takes much longer for you, use a local distro mirror
225 To use squid to cache yum downloads, read this first:
226 https://lists.dulug.duke.edu/pipermail/yum/2006-August/009041.html
227 (In brief, because yum chooses random mirrors each time, squid doesn't
228 work very well with default yum configuration. To get around this,
229 choose a Fedora mirror which is close to you, set this with
230 './configure --with-mirror=[...]', and then proxy the whole lot
231 through squid by setting http_proxy environment variable).
233 You will also need to substantially increase the squid configuration
235 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Using_Mock_to_test_package_builds#Using_Squid_to_Speed_Up_Mock_package_downloads
238 Porting to other Linux distros / non-Linux
239 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
241 libguestfs itself should be fairly portable to other Linux
242 distributions. Non-Linux ports are trickier, but we will accept
243 patches if they aren't too invasive.
245 The main porting issues are with the dependencies needed to build the
246 appliance. You will need to port the febootstrap first
247 (http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/febootstrap/).
250 Copyright and license information
251 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
253 Copyright (C) 2009-2011 Red Hat Inc.
255 The library is distributed under the LGPLv2+. The programs are
256 distributed under the GPLv2+. Please see the files COPYING and
257 COPYING.LIB for full license information.