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
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15 - recent QEMU >= 0.13 with virtio-serial support
17 - kernel >= 2.6.34 with virtio-serial support enabled. virtio-block
18 and virtio-serial support are not required but highly recommended.
20 - febootstrap >= 3.0 (recommended >= 3.3)
21 *NB*: febootstrap 2.x WILL NOT WORK
22 febootstrap 3.x is distro-independent, and is required on
23 Debian and other distros too
25 - XDR, rpcgen (on Linux these are provided by glibc)
27 - pcre (Perl Compatible Regular Expressions C library) (optional)
29 - libmagic (the library that corresponds to the 'file' command) (optional)
35 - Augeas (http://augeas.net/) (optional)
39 - squashfs-tools (mksquashfs only)
41 - genisoimage / mkisofs
43 - hivex >= 1.2.1 (http://libguestfs.org/download)
45 - (Optional) Berkeley DB 'db_dump' and 'db_load' utilities
46 (db4-utils or db4.X-util or similar)
48 - (Optional) FUSE to build the FUSE module
50 - perldoc (pod2man, pod2text, pod2html) to generate the manual pages
51 and other documentation.
53 - (Optional) Readline to have nicer command-line editing in guestfish.
55 - (Optional) xmllint to validate virt-inspector RELAX NG schema
57 - (Optional) OCaml if you want to rebuild the generated files, and
58 also to build the OCaml bindings
60 - (Optional) Perl if you want to build the perl bindings
62 - (Optional) Python if you want to build the python bindings
64 - (Optional) Ruby, rake if you want to build the ruby bindings
66 - (Optional) Java, JNI, jpackage-utils if you want to build the java
69 - (Optional) GHC if you want to build the Haskell bindings
71 - (Optional) Perl Sys::Virt module.
73 - (Optional) Perl Win::Hivex module.
75 - (Optional) Perl Pod::Usage module.
77 - (Optional) Perl Test::More module (from perl Test::Simple).
79 - (Optional) Perl String::ShellQuote module.
81 - (Optional, but highly recommended) perl-libintl for translating perl code.
83 - (Optional) po4a for translating manpages and POD files.
85 - (Optional) PHP, phpize if you want to build the PHP bindings
87 - (Optional, but highly recommended) getfacl, getfattr
89 Running ./configure will check you have all the requirements installed
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96 Then make the daemon, library and root filesystem:
101 Finally run the tests:
105 If everything works, you can install the library and tools by running
106 this command as root:
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114 By far the most common problem is with broken or incompatible
117 Different versions of qemu have problems booting the appliance for
118 different reasons. This varies between versions of qemu, and Linux
119 distributions which add their own patches.
121 If you find a problem, you could try using your own qemu built from
122 source (qemu is very easy to build from source), with a 'qemu
123 wrapper'. Qemu wrappers are described in the guestfs(3) manpage.
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129 By default the configure script will look for qemu-kvm (KVM support).
130 You will need a reasonably recent processor for this to work. KVM is
131 much faster than using plain Qemu.
133 You may also need to enable KVM support for non-root users, by following
136 http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/FAQ#How_can_I_use_kvm_with_a_non-privileged_user.3F
138 On some systems, this will work too:
142 On some systems, the chmod will not survive a reboot, and you will
143 need to make edits to the udev configuration.
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149 Previous versions of libguestfs required something called "vmchannel".
150 Vmchannel is a special device given to virtual machines which allows
151 them to communicate in some way with the host, often (but not always)
152 without using a traditional network device. In reality, there is no
153 one thing called "vmchannel". This idea has been reimplemented
154 several times under the name vmchannel, and other hypervisors have
155 their own incompatible implementation(s) too.
157 In libguestfs <= 1.0.71, we required a specific vmchannel which is
158 properly known as "guestfwd" and has been upstream in qemu since here:
160 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2009-02/msg01042.html
162 In libguestfs >= 1.0.71 we don't require any vmchannel implementation,
163 as long as qemu has been compiled with support for SLIRP (user mode
164 networking, or "-net user"), which is almost always the case.
166 In libguestfs >= 1.5.4 we switched again to using qemu's virtio-serial
167 and removed all the other vmchannels and the SLIRP channel.
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173 In libguestfs >= 1.7.19 the supermin appliance is the default and only
174 supported form of appliance. For more information see febootstrap
175 (http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/febootstrap/).
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181 On my machines I can usually rebuild the appliance in around 3
182 minutes. If it takes much longer for you, use a local distro mirror
185 To use squid to cache yum downloads, read this first:
186 https://lists.dulug.duke.edu/pipermail/yum/2006-August/009041.html
187 (In brief, because yum chooses random mirrors each time, squid doesn't
188 work very well with default yum configuration. To get around this,
189 choose a Fedora mirror which is close to you, set this with
190 './configure --with-mirror=[...]', and then proxy the whole lot
191 through squid by setting http_proxy environment variable).
193 You will also need to substantially increase the squid configuration
195 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Using_Mock_to_test_package_builds#Using_Squid_to_Speed_Up_Mock_package_downloads
198 Porting to other Linux distros / non-Linux
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201 libguestfs itself should be fairly portable to other Linux
202 distributions. Non-Linux ports are trickier, but we will accept
203 patches if they aren't too invasive.
205 The main porting issues are with the dependencies needed to build the
206 appliance. You will need to port the febootstrap first
207 (http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/febootstrap/).
210 Copyright and license information
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213 Copyright (C) 2009-2010 Red Hat Inc.
215 The library is distributed under the LGPLv2+. The programs are
216 distributed under the GPLv2+. Please see the files COPYING and
217 COPYING.LIB for full license information.