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 - systemtap/DTrace userspace probes (optional)
81 http://sourceware.org/systemtap/wiki/AddingUserSpaceProbingToApps
83 - perldoc (pod2man, pod2text, pod2html) to generate the manual pages
84 and other documentation.
86 - Readline to have nicer command-line editing in guestfish (optional)
88 - xmllint (part of libxml2) to validate virt-inspector
89 RELAX NG schema (optional)
91 - OCaml if you want to rebuild the generated files, and
92 also to build the OCaml bindings (optional)
94 - po4a for translating manpages and POD files.
95 This is optional when compiling from the tarball, but mandatory
96 if you compile from git.
98 - getfacl, getfattr libraries and programs (optional)
100 To build FUSE support (guestmount):
102 - FUSE libraries and kernel module (optional)
104 To build language bindings:
106 - Perl if you want to build the perl bindings (optional)
108 - Python if you want to build the python bindings (optional)
110 - Ruby, rake if you want to build the ruby bindings (optional)
112 - Java, JNI, jpackage-utils if you want to build the java
115 - GHC if you want to build the Haskell bindings (optional)
117 - PHP, phpize if you want to build the PHP bindings (optional)
119 To build the Perl tools:
121 - Perl Sys::Virt module (optional)
123 - Perl Win::Hivex module (optional)
125 - Perl Pod::Usage module (optional)
127 - Perl Test::More module (from perl Test::Simple) (optional)
129 - Perl String::ShellQuote module (optional)
131 - perl-libintl for translating perl code (optional)
135 - virt-sysprep requires FUSE support since it uses guestmount
139 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
141 Then make the daemon, library and root filesystem:
146 Finally run the tests:
150 There are some extra tests, but these require that you have some
151 libvirt guests installed, that these guests' disks are accessible by
152 the current user, and these tests may fail for other reasons which are
153 not necessarily because of real problems. If you want to run these
158 If everything works, you can install the library and tools by running
159 this command as root:
163 You can run guestfish, guestmount and the virt tools without needing
164 to install, using the "run" script in the top directory. This script
165 sets up some environment variables. For example:
167 ./run ./fish/guestfish [usual guestfish args ...]
169 ./run ./inspector/virt-inspector [usual virt-inspector args ...]
171 If you are already in the fish/ subdirectory, then the following
172 command will also work:
174 ../run ./guestfish [...]
176 You can also make a symlink (note: NOT a hard link) from your $PATH to
180 ln -s ~/libguestfs/run libguestfs-run
182 libguestfs-run ./inspector/virt-inspector [...]
184 You can also run the C programs under valgrind like this:
186 ./run valgrind [valgrind opts...] ./cat/virt-cat [virt-cat opts...]
188 This also works with sudo (eg. if you need root access for libvirt or
189 to access a block device):
191 sudo ./run ./cat/virt-cat -d LinuxGuest /etc/passwd
195 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
197 By far the most common problem is with broken or incompatible
200 Different versions of qemu have problems booting the appliance for
201 different reasons. This varies between versions of qemu, and Linux
202 distributions which add their own patches.
204 If you find a problem, you could try using your own qemu built from
205 source (qemu is very easy to build from source), with a 'qemu
206 wrapper'. Qemu wrappers are described in the guestfs(3) manpage.
210 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
212 By default the configure script will look for qemu-kvm (KVM support).
213 You will need a reasonably recent processor for this to work. KVM is
214 much faster than using plain Qemu.
216 You may also need to enable KVM support for non-root users, by following
219 http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/FAQ#How_can_I_use_kvm_with_a_non-privileged_user.3F
221 On some systems, this will work too:
225 On some systems, the chmod will not survive a reboot, and you will
226 need to make edits to the udev configuration.
230 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
232 On my machines I can usually rebuild the appliance in around 3
233 minutes. If it takes much longer for you, use a local distro mirror
236 To use squid to cache yum downloads, read this first:
237 https://lists.dulug.duke.edu/pipermail/yum/2006-August/009041.html
238 (In brief, because yum chooses random mirrors each time, squid doesn't
239 work very well with default yum configuration. To get around this,
240 choose a Fedora mirror which is close to you, set this with
241 './configure --with-mirror=[...]', and then proxy the whole lot
242 through squid by setting http_proxy environment variable).
244 You will also need to substantially increase the squid configuration
246 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Using_Mock_to_test_package_builds#Using_Squid_to_Speed_Up_Mock_package_downloads
249 Porting to other Linux distros / non-Linux
250 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
252 libguestfs itself should be fairly portable to other Linux
253 distributions. Non-Linux ports are trickier, but we will accept
254 patches if they aren't too invasive.
256 The main porting issues are with the dependencies needed to build the
257 appliance. You will need to port the febootstrap first
258 (http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/febootstrap/).
261 Copyright and license information
262 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
264 Copyright (C) 2009-2011 Red Hat Inc.
266 The library is distributed under the LGPLv2+. The programs are
267 distributed under the GPLv2+. Please see the files COPYING and
268 COPYING.LIB for full license information.