1 Release notes for libguestfs 1.8.0
2 ----------------------------------
4 These release notes only cover the differences from the previous
5 stable/dev branch split (1.6.0). For detailed changelogs, please see
6 the git repository, or the ChangeLog file distributed in the tarball.
10 - Support and packages for Debian and Ubuntu.
12 - Daily builds from git repository on Debian and Ubuntu to reduce risk
15 - Port to ArchLinux 'pacman' (thanks Thomas S Hatch).
17 - The following tools have been rewritten in C (originally in Perl):
25 - Some C tools support encrypted guests automatically. This is
26 supported in: guestfish, guestmount, virt-cat, virt-inspector,
29 - New tool virt-filesystems (in C) which is a replacement for
30 virt-list-filesystems and virt-list-partitions, and has a superset
31 of the functionality of those tools.
33 - guestfish, guestmount and the C tools use unified command line option
34 parsing, so they support many common options such as '-a disk.img',
35 '-d libvirt-domain', '-x', '-v'. The old command line option
36 parsing is preserved for compatibility in scripts etc.
38 - guestfish no longer has any dependencies on Perl
40 - New man pages containing programming examples: guestfs-examples(3) (C/C++),
41 guestfs-ocaml(3), guestfs-python(3), guestfs-ruby(3).
43 - Trace mode prints return values from API functions.
45 - virt-inspector can list applications installed in Windows guests, along
46 with a great deal of information about those applications.
48 - Add support for inspecting: Linux Mint, Mandriva, FreeBSD.
50 - guestfish --rw option (with no effect currently) to make potentially
51 dangerous write access explicit.
53 - guestfish --listen --csh for compatibility with csh, tcsh (thanks
56 - The first upstream version that introduced each API function is now
57 documented in guestfs(3).
59 - guestfs_last_errno allows you to retrieve the errno from the
60 daemon, correctly translated to the local operating system.
62 - Functions can now have optional parameters.
64 - Progress bars and progress notifications can now happen for upload
67 - Appliance builder more careful about not leaving temporary files
70 - getfattr/setfattr commands added to virt-rescue.
72 - ROADMAP file covers roadmap and goals for future releases.
76 - New SECURITY section in guestfs(3) API documentation.
78 - virt-inspector no longer runs any guest commands.
80 - Inspection code is more careful about avoiding very large files
81 from guests which might previously have caused a denial of service.
83 - FUSE calls into guestmount are now traced when using guestmount -x.
90 - inspect-get-hostname
91 - inspect-get-package-format
92 - inspect-get-package-management
94 - inspect-list-applications
100 - C programs now only link precisely with the libraries that they use.
102 - PCRE, libmagic, hivex and libvirt libraries are now completely
103 optional for building.
105 - Multiple memory leaks and file descriptor leaks fixed.
107 - Add a POD wrapper to unify generation of man pages and HTML files
110 - Source includes phony images of Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu and
113 - Ruby bindings have 'make install' rule.
115 - <guestfs.h> is now a single file.
117 - <guestfs.h> does not require XDR headers.
119 - ocaml xml-light library is no longer required to build (thanks
122 - ./configure --disable-[...] for each language binding (thanks
125 - Old ocaml-viewer program removed (use guestfs-browser instead).
127 - New C API test type 'InitScratchFS' makes the tests run a little
130 - Excluded packages in the appliance are now listed in a separate
131 file appliance/excludelist.in, and can be customized per-distro.
135 - 663407 readlink and readlinklist returns /sysroot/ in some paths
136 - 661280 virt-rescue: panic when shutting down: "/sbin/reboot: No such file or directory"
137 - 657499 checksum: wrong check sum type causes umount to fail
138 - 655554 Whole disk paths are not made canonical by virt-inspector
139 - 654638 openssl updated to 1.0.0b libguestfs depends on exact file names
140 - 652796 ruby bindings not installed by 'make install', hence omitted from the binary distribution
142 Release notes for libguestfs 1.6.0
143 ----------------------------------
145 These release notes only cover the differences from the previous
146 stable/dev branch split (1.4.0). For detailed changelogs, please see
147 the git repository, or the ChangeLog file distributed in the tarball.
151 - Use a new method for creating and caching the appliance. This
152 greatly improves the performance of libguestfs, often by a factor
155 - Support for guest inspection (like virt-inspector) via the ordinary
156 API and all language bindings. 'guestfish -i' option is as a side-
159 - virt-inspector and core inspection API can now detect guests running:
160 Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Windows, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS,
161 Scientific Linux, Gentoo, Pardus, Arch Linux, MeeGo.
163 - Support for LUKS whole-disk encryption in guests.
167 - Progress messages (and progress bars in guestfish and virt-resize)
168 for certain long-running operations.
170 - virt-df is now much more efficient. Use '--one-per-guest' to restore
171 the old per-guest isolation behaviour.
173 - guestfish 'copy-in' and 'copy-out' commands for copying files and
174 directories recursively in and out of the guest.
176 - guestfish 'hexedit' command for doing binary edits to devices and
179 - Change guestfish -i syntax to allow commands to be specified on the
180 command line (retaining backwards compatibility).
182 - guestfish '-d <domain>' for adding disks from libvirt domains.
184 - guestfish '-N' option supports several new prepared disk image types:
185 lvfs : disk with LV formatted with filesystem
188 bootrootlv : boot and root on LV
190 - guestfish 'more' and 'edit' commands now work with arbitrary files.
192 - guestfish '--echo-keys' option allows you to echo keys/passphrases
195 - guestmount now supports -a / -d / -i options, like guestfish.
197 - Use virtio-serial for communications with the appliance. This
198 also has a major performance benefit.
200 - virt-edit '-b' option to create a backup of edited files.
202 - virt-edit '-e' option for non-interactive edits to files.
204 - Ability to capture core dumps from the appliance (thanks Matthew Booth).
206 - virt-rescue now shuts down cleanly (thanks Matthew Booth).
208 - virt-rescue now has a --network option to enable network access.
210 - virt-resize can now handle guests which use GPT partition table format.
212 - virt-resize has better support for shrinking guests.
214 - virt-resize supports qcow2-format guests.
216 - $TMPDIR can be used to override almost all temporary directory usage.
218 - OCaml users can use an alternate OO-style of coding, eg. g#launch ()
220 - The API supports calls which take optional parameters, eg.
221 $g->add_drive_opts ("disk", readonly => 1);
223 - Trace output now escapes and shortens large strings (thanks
226 - Autosync is now on by default, resulting in more reliable behaviour
227 when the handle is closed.
229 - virt-df --uuid option allows you to follow a domain across migration
232 - Translations of manual pages.
236 - CVE-2010-3851 libguestfs: missing disk format specifier when adding a disk
237 https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2010-October/msg00036.html
238 This is comprehensively fixed in this release, and the fix will be
239 backported to the other stable branches after more testing.
241 - virt-inspector no longer relies on untrusted guest code to list
242 applications in some guests.
246 download-offset, file-architecture, findfs-label, findfs-uuid,
247 inspect-os, inspect-get-arch, inspect-get-distro,
248 inspect-get-filesystems, inspect-get-major-version,
249 inspect-get-minor-version, inspect-get-mountpoints,
250 inspect-get-product-name, inspect-get-type, is-blockdev, is-chardev,
251 is-fifo, is-lv, is-socket, is-symlink, list-filesystems, luks-add-key,
252 luks-close, luks-format, luks-format-cipher, luks-kill-slot,
253 luks-open, luks-open-ro, lvm-clear-filter, lvm-canonical-lv-name,
254 lvm-set-filter, part-to-dev, pread-device, pwrite-device,
259 - Use size_t for loop iterators.
260 - Refactor the library code into separate files.
261 - Refactor the generator code into separate files.
262 - Generate guestfish commands.
263 - guestfish & guestmount options processing is unified.
265 error message size increased to 64K
266 send errno to library
267 - Add 'make bindist' to make a binary distribution.
268 - Cleaner behaviour under valgrind.
269 - More testing of the guestfish command line options and libvirt
271 - The Perl inspection code is no longer used by any of the tools.
275 - 646822 libguestfs trace mode should not print long binary strings
276 - 646821 virt-df should have --uuid option
277 - 646432 /dev/mapper paths should not be returned from guestfs_mountpoints
278 - 643624 libguestfs tools documentation should describe how to quote guest domain names from shell
279 - 642934 No way to specify disk format when adding a disk to libguestfs
280 - 642933 guestfs_list_filesystems should be used in all possible places
281 - 642932 guestmount options should match guestfish options
282 - 642930 virt-inspector (Sys::Guestfs::Lib) should use C inspection APIs
283 - 642929 C inspection code should ignore /dev/fd* in /etc/fstab
284 - 642826 virt-resize converts any other image format to raw without notifying user, instructions do not account for this
285 - 640961 Document that grub-install might be needed for old Linux guests after virt-resize
286 - 639986 virt-df --csv does not properly quote " in libvirt domain names
287 - 639405 Interrupted cached appliance creation leaves libguestfs unusable
288 - 638901 Appliance filename should not contain repository name
289 - 638899 /dev/mapper paths should not be returned from C inspection APIs
290 - 636918 Updates to Spanish translation
291 - 636061 [abrt] guestfish-1.2.11-1.fc12: malloc_consolidate: Process /usr/bin/guestfish was killed by signal 11 (SIGSEGV)
292 - 635969 glob echo mkfs ext2 /dev/vd[b-t]1 prints garbage
293 - 634246 guestfs_part_get_parttype returns "loop" when run against a partition, LV or filesystem
294 - 633766 virt-resize --shrink fails
295 - 633357 Updates to Spanish translation
296 - 633096 virt-resize calculates block device size incorrectly, doesn't work with qcow2 target
297 - 629593 Dutch translation added
298 - 627556 Updates to Spanish translations of libguestfs
299 - 626843 Updates to Spanish translations
300 - 619793 [RFE] Need a way to determine if a particular block device is a logical volume
301 - 618556 virt-rescue return none zero value when exit
302 - 617200 mount operation failed and hung on some images which running in read-only mode
303 - 610880 libguestfs should set broader read perms on tmpdir, so works in some situations when executed with umask 077
304 - 599503 document that mkmountpoint and umount-all cannot be mixed
305 - 571714 Running virt-df on disk image relabels it, so qemu can no longer write to it.
306 - 502533 Updated Polish translation of libguestfs
308 Release notes for libguestfs 1.4.0
309 ----------------------------------
311 These release notes only cover the differences from the previous
312 stable/dev branch split (1.2.0). For detailed changelogs, please see
313 the git repository, or the ChangeLog file distributed in the tarball.
317 - guestfish lets you choose a prepared disk image, eg:
320 - Add write support to guestmount (FUSE) module.
322 - virt-resize can now resize the content of partitions and logical
323 volumes in the guest, and we have better support for shrinking guests.
325 - Bash tab-completion script for guestfish.
327 - Add ZFS support to virt-rescue.
329 - New tool 'virt-make-fs' for creating filesystems with content.
331 - Allow suffixes on any guestfish number parameter, eg. "1M".
333 - guestfish 'man' command opens the manual page.
335 - guestfish supports a "heredoc" syntax for uploading files:
340 - Some guestfish commands now print their output in octal or hex
341 where appropriate (RHBZ#583242).
343 - Allow dash prefix on guestfish command line. This ignores any
344 error from the second command: (RHBZ#578407)
345 guestfish -- cmd1 : -cmd2 : cmd3
347 - guestfish -h / help command now returns an error for non-existent
348 commands (RHBZ#597145).
350 - New 'supported' command in guestfish to list optional groups of
351 commands which are supported by the daemon / configuration.
353 - virt-inspector and guestfish -i now work for filenames which
354 contain spaces (RHBZ#507810).
356 - Change the protocol to use link-local addresses, to avoid
357 conflicting with any address that the host might be using
360 - libguestfs now sets the correct time and timezone on filesystem
363 - Sort the domains into alphabetical order in virt-df.
365 - Make mkfs-b command work for FAT and NTFS by mapping the blocksize
366 parameter to the cluster size (RHBZ#599464).
368 - Add version numbers to Perl modules (RHBZ#521674).
370 - Localization now works for all the libguestfs tools (RHBZ#559963).
372 - Tools now support filesystem-on-image VMs (RHBZ#590167).
374 - virt-list-partitions has a '-t' option to show the total size of disks.
376 - Include extra Augeas lenses in the supermin appliance (Matthew Booth).
378 - Add error and close callbacks.
380 - Add explicit close method in the Perl API.
382 - Multiple fixes for RHEL 5 compatibility.
384 - Multiple fixes for Debian/Ubuntu compatibility.
386 - Multiple revisions to improve the documentation.
390 - Fix a potential DoS in virt-inspector and virt-v2v if a specially
391 crafted disk image contained a char device in place of one of the
392 configuration files that we read under /etc (RHBZ#582484).
396 - aug-clear - clear Augeas path
397 - available-all-groups - return a list of all optional groups
398 - base64-in - upload base64-encoded data to file
399 - base64-out - download file and encode as base64
400 - checksum-device - compute checksums on the contents of a device
401 - checksums-out - compute checksums of multiple files in a directory
402 - debug-upload - upload a file to the appliance
403 - fallocate64 - preallocate a file in the guest filesystem
404 - fill-pattern - fill a file with a repeating pattern of bytes
405 - get-umask - get the current umask
406 - lvresize-free - expand an LV to fill free space
407 - ntfsresize - resize an NTFS filesystem
408 - ntfsresize-size - resize an NTFS filesystem (with size)
409 - part-del - delete a partition
410 - part-get-bootable - get the bootable flag of a partition
411 - part-get-mbr-id - get the MBR type byte of a partition
412 - part-set-mbr-id - set the MBR type byte of a partition
413 - pvresize-size - resize a physical volume (with size)
414 - pwrite - write to part of a file
415 - resize2fs-size - resize an ext2/3/4 filesystem (with size)
416 - txz-in - unpack compressed tarball to directory (RHBZ#580556)
417 - txz-out - pack directory into compressed tarball (RHBZ#580556)
418 - vfs-label - get the filesystem label
419 - vfs-uuid - get the filesystem UUID
420 - vgscan - rescan for LVM physical volumes, volume groups and logical volumes
421 - write - create a new file
422 - zero-device - write zeroes to an entire device
426 - Extend the generator to support testing optional features.
427 - Stricter checks on input parameters to many calls (RHBZ#501893 RHBZ#501894)
428 - Extend the protocol to support sending arbitrary 8 bit data buffers.
429 - Ship 'BUGS' file with releases. This is a summary of the bugs in
430 the Red Hat Bugzilla database.
431 - Ship 'RELEASE-NOTES' file with releases, containing release notes.
432 - Unify supermin appliance building into one place, in febootstrap 2.7.
433 - Fix the protocol code to handle the case where both ends send cancel
434 messages at the same time.
438 - 612178 guestfish: using -m option in conjunction with --listen option causes appliance to die
439 - 610880 libguestfs should set broader read perms on tmpdir, so works in some situations when executed with umask 077
440 - 604691 OCaml bindings are not thread safe
441 - 603870 Updates to Spanish translation
442 - 602592 [RFE] expose guestfs_close in perl bindings
443 - 600977 virt-df -h --csv "Argument .. isn't numeric in printf"
444 - 599464 mkfs-b does not support vfat/ntfs
445 - 598807 add_cdrom does not work in RHEL 6
446 - 598309 part-list and several other cmd failed on libguestfs on RHEL5
447 - 597145 guestfish 'help' command should indicate error in exit status with an unknown command
448 - 597135 guestfish write-file cmd does not check "size" parameter
449 - 597118 A warning should be given in the help of mke2journal-L for the length of label
450 - 597112 get-e2uuid should use blkid instead of "tune2fs -l" to get filesystem UUID
451 - 596776 virt-inspector doesn't discover modprobe aliases on RHEL 3 guests
452 - 596763 Updates to Spanish translation
453 - 593292 Updates to Spanish translation
454 - 592883 can not edit files on images mounted with guestmount cmd
455 - 592360 Updates to Spanish translation
456 - 591250 virt-tar prints "tar_in: tar subcommand failed on directory" if the archive is compressed or not in the right format
457 - 591155 virt-tar prints "tar_in: tar subcommand failed on directory" if a disk image is not writable
458 - 591142 virt-inspector should give an error for unrecognized disk images
459 - 590167 virt-inspector and other virt tools should be able to handle filesystem-on-image VMs
460 - 589039 guestfish read-file cmd will cause daemon hang when read large files
461 - 588851 guestfs_launch() returns -1, but guestfs_last_error() == NULL
462 - 588763 libguestfs should use non-public or link-local addresses for appliance network
463 - 588733 Updates to Spanish translation
464 - 588651 guestfish 'strings-e' cmd does not give proper error message or hint
465 - 587484 lvresize can't reduce size of a volumn
466 - 585961 Updates to Spanish translation
467 - 585223 ntfsresize should support shrinking filesystems
468 - 585222 pvresize should support shrinking PVs
469 - 585221 resize2fs should support shrinking filesystems
470 - 584038 Updates to Spanish translation
471 - 583554 [FEAT] mknod-mode command is needed to set mode explicitly
472 - 583242 [RFE] guestfish should print outputs in a suitable base (eg. octal for modes)
473 - 582993 guestfish eats words when tab completing case (in)sensitive paths
474 - 582953 Misleading help information about lvcreate command
475 - 582948 mknod command doesn't make block, character or FIFO devices
476 - 582929 mknod doesn't check for invalid mode
477 - 582901 guestfish chmod/umask commands do not check invalid mode value
478 - 582899 guestfish:sparse is missed from command autocomplete list
479 - 582891 [Feature Request] behavior and return value of guestfish umask cmd should be changed
480 - 582548 [mknod] umask shouldn't take effect when mode is set explicitly
481 - 582484 some guestfish sub commands can not handle special files properly
482 - 582252 Updates to Spanish translation
483 - 581501 Updates to Spanish translation
484 - 580650 virt-inspector warns "No grub default specified at /usr/lib/perl5/Sys/Guestfs/Lib.pm at [...]"
485 - 580556 request for libguestfs to support .txz tarballs
486 - 580246 tar-in command hangs if uploading more than available space
487 - 580016 aug-ls in guestfish does not take augeas variable as argument
488 - 579664 guestfish doesn't report error when there is not enough space for image allocation
489 - 579608 multiple commands in guestfish can not work for symbol links
490 - 579155 libguestfs hangs if qemu doesn't start (in null vmchannel mode)
491 - 578407 the prefix '-' in sub-command isn't handled by guestfish in remote control mode
492 - 576879 libguestfs protocol loses synchronization if you 'upload' before mounting disks
493 - 559963 libguestfs Perl programs do set locale, but still localization doesn't work
494 - 521674 Perl modules are unversioned, but should carry version numbers
495 - 516096 Race condition in test_swapon_label_0: /sbin/blockdev: BLKRRPART: Device or resource busy
496 - 507810 guestfish -i / virt-inspector cannot handle spaces in filenames
497 - 502533 Updated Polish translation of libguestfs
498 - 501894 Some String parameters should be OptString
499 - 501893 String parameters should be checked for != NULL
500 - 501889 write-file does not support strings containing ASCII NUL
501 - 484986 grub-install fails on virtio disk
503 Release notes for previous versions of libguestfs
504 -------------------------------------------------
507 https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2009-November/msg00095.html
510 https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2009-August/msg00281.html
513 https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2009-July/msg00059.html
516 https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2009-July/msg00023.html