1 Release notes for libguestfs 1.10.0
2 -----------------------------------
4 [Not complete. Last update commit e751293e10d5ecbb2ef43a61b9c153a1fc4f0304]
6 These release notes only cover the differences from the previous
7 stable/dev branch split (1.8.0). For detailed changelogs, please see
8 the git repository, or the ChangeLog file distributed in the tarball.
12 - [NOT DONE] --ro is now the default for guestfish.
14 - libguestfs and tools can be used against live virtual machines.
15 See the 'guestfish --live' and 'guestmount --live' options, and (for
16 the low-level interface) the new APIs set-attach-method and
20 virt-copy-in, virt-copy-out, virt-tar-in, virt-tar-out.
22 - You can now inspect the install disks and live CDs of many different
25 - guestfish <! cmd which executes a shell cmd and inlines the result.
27 - New event API allows more than one callback to be registered for
28 each event, makes it possible to call the API from other languages,
29 and allows nearly all log, debug and trace messages to be rerouted
32 - A series of protocol fixes has fixed the old bug RHBZ#576879
33 which used to cause errors during the upload command to lose
34 protocol synchronization.
36 - Greater FHS compliance for temporary files, including using /var/tmp
37 for large cached files that should survive reboot (instead of /tmp).
39 - mkfs-opts allows filesystem features to be specified.
41 - More intelligent handling of mountpoints, allowing mkmountpoint, mount
42 and umount-all commands to work together properly.
44 - Trace messages are prefixed with a distinct string, allowing them to
45 be easily 'grepped' out from debug output.
47 - Publish example code in: C, Perl, Python, OCaml, Ruby.
49 - The Java and Ruby bindings have been improved greatly.
51 - Perl includes a way to get the errno of the last error.
53 - Transifex is now being used to manage translations.
54 http://www.transifex.net/projects/p/libguestfs/
56 - Inspection now supports Red Hat Desktop, Slackware distributions.
58 - Inspection no longer fails for Windows guests that have two or
61 - Inspection can now tell the difference between Windows 2008 Server
72 inspect-get-product-variant,
79 - The 'HACKING' file is obsolete. The contents have been moved into
80 a section of the guestfs(3) manual page.
84 - 502533 Updated Polish translation of libguestfs
85 - 576879 libguestfs protocol loses synchronization if you 'upload' before mounting disks
86 - 599503 document that mkmountpoint and umount-all cannot be mixed
87 - 617440 guestfish: fails to tilde expand '~' when the $HOME env is unset
88 - 664558 RFE: Allow to set log callback in Ruby bindings
89 - 665358 Punjabi Translation Completed (pa_IN)
90 - 666577 libguestfs: unknown filesystem /dev/fd0
91 - 667610 Multiple bugs, memory leaks in libguestfs ruby bindings
92 - 668112 virt-filesystems command fails on guest with corrupt filesystem label
93 - 668574 guestfish -i is trying to mount all mounts from /etc/fstab and fails with an error when device doesn't exists
94 - 673479 Add a grep-friendly string to LIBGUESTFS_TRACE output
95 - 682756 libguestfs trace segfaults when list-filesystems returns error
96 - 682979 libguestfs incorrectly detects Red Hat desktop as 'redhat-based' instead of 'redhat'
97 - 690819 mkfs fails creating a filesytem on a disk device when using a disk with 'ide' interface
99 Release notes for libguestfs 1.8.0
100 ----------------------------------
102 These release notes only cover the differences from the previous
103 stable/dev branch split (1.6.0). For detailed changelogs, please see
104 the git repository, or the ChangeLog file distributed in the tarball.
108 - Support and packages for Debian and Ubuntu.
110 - Daily builds from git repository on Debian and Ubuntu to reduce risk
113 - Port to ArchLinux 'pacman' (thanks Thomas S Hatch).
115 - The following tools have been rewritten in C (originally in Perl):
123 - Some C tools support encrypted guests automatically. This is
124 supported in: guestfish, guestmount, virt-cat, virt-inspector,
127 - New tool virt-filesystems (in C) which is a replacement for
128 virt-list-filesystems and virt-list-partitions, and has a superset
129 of the functionality of those tools.
131 - guestfish, guestmount and the C tools use unified command line option
132 parsing, so they support many common options such as '-a disk.img',
133 '-d libvirt-domain', '-x', '-v'. The old command line option
134 parsing is preserved for compatibility in scripts etc.
136 - guestfish no longer has any dependencies on Perl
138 - New man pages containing programming examples: guestfs-examples(3) (C/C++),
139 guestfs-ocaml(3), guestfs-python(3), guestfs-ruby(3).
141 - Trace mode prints return values from API functions.
143 - virt-inspector can list applications installed in Windows guests, along
144 with a great deal of information about those applications.
146 - Add support for inspecting: Linux Mint, Mandriva, FreeBSD.
148 - guestfish --rw option (with no effect currently) to make potentially
149 dangerous write access explicit.
151 - guestfish --listen --csh for compatibility with csh, tcsh (thanks
154 - The first upstream version that introduced each API function is now
155 documented in guestfs(3).
157 - guestfs_last_errno allows you to retrieve the errno from the
158 daemon, correctly translated to the local operating system.
160 - Functions can now have optional parameters.
162 - Progress bars and progress notifications can now happen for upload
165 - Appliance builder more careful about not leaving temporary files
168 - getfattr/setfattr commands added to virt-rescue.
170 - ROADMAP file covers roadmap and goals for future releases.
174 - New SECURITY section in guestfs(3) API documentation.
176 - virt-inspector no longer runs any guest commands.
178 - Inspection code is more careful about avoiding very large files
179 from guests which might previously have caused a denial of service.
181 - FUSE calls into guestmount are now traced when using guestmount -x.
188 - inspect-get-hostname
189 - inspect-get-package-format
190 - inspect-get-package-management
192 - inspect-list-applications
198 - C programs now only link precisely with the libraries that they use.
200 - PCRE, libmagic, hivex and libvirt libraries are now completely
201 optional for building.
203 - Multiple memory leaks and file descriptor leaks fixed.
205 - Add a POD wrapper to unify generation of man pages and HTML files
208 - Source includes phony images of Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu and
211 - Ruby bindings have 'make install' rule.
213 - <guestfs.h> is now a single file.
215 - <guestfs.h> does not require XDR headers.
217 - ocaml xml-light library is no longer required to build (thanks
220 - ./configure --disable-[...] for each language binding (thanks
223 - Old ocaml-viewer program removed (use guestfs-browser instead).
225 - New C API test type 'InitScratchFS' makes the tests run a little
228 - Excluded packages in the appliance are now listed in a separate
229 file appliance/excludelist.in, and can be customized per-distro.
233 - 663407 readlink and readlinklist returns /sysroot/ in some paths
234 - 661280 virt-rescue: panic when shutting down: "/sbin/reboot: No such file or directory"
235 - 657499 checksum: wrong check sum type causes umount to fail
236 - 655554 Whole disk paths are not made canonical by virt-inspector
237 - 654638 openssl updated to 1.0.0b libguestfs depends on exact file names
238 - 652796 ruby bindings not installed by 'make install', hence omitted from the binary distribution
240 Release notes for libguestfs 1.6.0
241 ----------------------------------
243 These release notes only cover the differences from the previous
244 stable/dev branch split (1.4.0). For detailed changelogs, please see
245 the git repository, or the ChangeLog file distributed in the tarball.
249 - Use a new method for creating and caching the appliance. This
250 greatly improves the performance of libguestfs, often by a factor
253 - Support for guest inspection (like virt-inspector) via the ordinary
254 API and all language bindings. 'guestfish -i' option is as a side-
257 - virt-inspector and core inspection API can now detect guests running:
258 Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Windows, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS,
259 Scientific Linux, Gentoo, Pardus, Arch Linux, MeeGo.
261 - Support for LUKS whole-disk encryption in guests.
265 - Progress messages (and progress bars in guestfish and virt-resize)
266 for certain long-running operations.
268 - virt-df is now much more efficient. Use '--one-per-guest' to restore
269 the old per-guest isolation behaviour.
271 - guestfish 'copy-in' and 'copy-out' commands for copying files and
272 directories recursively in and out of the guest.
274 - guestfish 'hexedit' command for doing binary edits to devices and
277 - Change guestfish -i syntax to allow commands to be specified on the
278 command line (retaining backwards compatibility).
280 - guestfish '-d <domain>' for adding disks from libvirt domains.
282 - guestfish '-N' option supports several new prepared disk image types:
283 lvfs : disk with LV formatted with filesystem
286 bootrootlv : boot and root on LV
288 - guestfish 'more' and 'edit' commands now work with arbitrary files.
290 - guestfish '--echo-keys' option allows you to echo keys/passphrases
293 - guestmount now supports -a / -d / -i options, like guestfish.
295 - Use virtio-serial for communications with the appliance. This
296 also has a major performance benefit.
298 - virt-edit '-b' option to create a backup of edited files.
300 - virt-edit '-e' option for non-interactive edits to files.
302 - Ability to capture core dumps from the appliance (thanks Matthew Booth).
304 - virt-rescue now shuts down cleanly (thanks Matthew Booth).
306 - virt-rescue now has a --network option to enable network access.
308 - virt-resize can now handle guests which use GPT partition table format.
310 - virt-resize has better support for shrinking guests.
312 - virt-resize supports qcow2-format guests.
314 - $TMPDIR can be used to override almost all temporary directory usage.
316 - OCaml users can use an alternate OO-style of coding, eg. g#launch ()
318 - The API supports calls which take optional parameters, eg.
319 $g->add_drive_opts ("disk", readonly => 1);
321 - Trace output now escapes and shortens large strings (thanks
324 - Autosync is now on by default, resulting in more reliable behaviour
325 when the handle is closed.
327 - virt-df --uuid option allows you to follow a domain across migration
330 - Translations of manual pages.
334 - CVE-2010-3851 libguestfs: missing disk format specifier when adding a disk
335 https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2010-October/msg00036.html
336 This is comprehensively fixed in this release, and the fix will be
337 backported to the other stable branches after more testing.
339 - virt-inspector no longer relies on untrusted guest code to list
340 applications in some guests.
344 download-offset, file-architecture, findfs-label, findfs-uuid,
345 inspect-os, inspect-get-arch, inspect-get-distro,
346 inspect-get-filesystems, inspect-get-major-version,
347 inspect-get-minor-version, inspect-get-mountpoints,
348 inspect-get-product-name, inspect-get-type, is-blockdev, is-chardev,
349 is-fifo, is-lv, is-socket, is-symlink, list-filesystems, luks-add-key,
350 luks-close, luks-format, luks-format-cipher, luks-kill-slot,
351 luks-open, luks-open-ro, lvm-clear-filter, lvm-canonical-lv-name,
352 lvm-set-filter, part-to-dev, pread-device, pwrite-device,
357 - Use size_t for loop iterators.
358 - Refactor the library code into separate files.
359 - Refactor the generator code into separate files.
360 - Generate guestfish commands.
361 - guestfish & guestmount options processing is unified.
363 error message size increased to 64K
364 send errno to library
365 - Add 'make bindist' to make a binary distribution.
366 - Cleaner behaviour under valgrind.
367 - More testing of the guestfish command line options and libvirt
369 - The Perl inspection code is no longer used by any of the tools.
373 - 646822 libguestfs trace mode should not print long binary strings
374 - 646821 virt-df should have --uuid option
375 - 646432 /dev/mapper paths should not be returned from guestfs_mountpoints
376 - 643624 libguestfs tools documentation should describe how to quote guest domain names from shell
377 - 642934 No way to specify disk format when adding a disk to libguestfs
378 - 642933 guestfs_list_filesystems should be used in all possible places
379 - 642932 guestmount options should match guestfish options
380 - 642930 virt-inspector (Sys::Guestfs::Lib) should use C inspection APIs
381 - 642929 C inspection code should ignore /dev/fd* in /etc/fstab
382 - 642826 virt-resize converts any other image format to raw without notifying user, instructions do not account for this
383 - 640961 Document that grub-install might be needed for old Linux guests after virt-resize
384 - 639986 virt-df --csv does not properly quote " in libvirt domain names
385 - 639405 Interrupted cached appliance creation leaves libguestfs unusable
386 - 638901 Appliance filename should not contain repository name
387 - 638899 /dev/mapper paths should not be returned from C inspection APIs
388 - 636918 Updates to Spanish translation
389 - 636061 [abrt] guestfish-1.2.11-1.fc12: malloc_consolidate: Process /usr/bin/guestfish was killed by signal 11 (SIGSEGV)
390 - 635969 glob echo mkfs ext2 /dev/vd[b-t]1 prints garbage
391 - 634246 guestfs_part_get_parttype returns "loop" when run against a partition, LV or filesystem
392 - 633766 virt-resize --shrink fails
393 - 633357 Updates to Spanish translation
394 - 633096 virt-resize calculates block device size incorrectly, doesn't work with qcow2 target
395 - 629593 Dutch translation added
396 - 627556 Updates to Spanish translations of libguestfs
397 - 626843 Updates to Spanish translations
398 - 619793 [RFE] Need a way to determine if a particular block device is a logical volume
399 - 618556 virt-rescue return none zero value when exit
400 - 617200 mount operation failed and hung on some images which running in read-only mode
401 - 610880 libguestfs should set broader read perms on tmpdir, so works in some situations when executed with umask 077
402 - 599503 document that mkmountpoint and umount-all cannot be mixed
403 - 571714 Running virt-df on disk image relabels it, so qemu can no longer write to it.
404 - 502533 Updated Polish translation of libguestfs
406 Release notes for libguestfs 1.4.0
407 ----------------------------------
409 These release notes only cover the differences from the previous
410 stable/dev branch split (1.2.0). For detailed changelogs, please see
411 the git repository, or the ChangeLog file distributed in the tarball.
415 - guestfish lets you choose a prepared disk image, eg:
418 - Add write support to guestmount (FUSE) module.
420 - virt-resize can now resize the content of partitions and logical
421 volumes in the guest, and we have better support for shrinking guests.
423 - Bash tab-completion script for guestfish.
425 - Add ZFS support to virt-rescue.
427 - New tool 'virt-make-fs' for creating filesystems with content.
429 - Allow suffixes on any guestfish number parameter, eg. "1M".
431 - guestfish 'man' command opens the manual page.
433 - guestfish supports a "heredoc" syntax for uploading files:
438 - Some guestfish commands now print their output in octal or hex
439 where appropriate (RHBZ#583242).
441 - Allow dash prefix on guestfish command line. This ignores any
442 error from the second command: (RHBZ#578407)
443 guestfish -- cmd1 : -cmd2 : cmd3
445 - guestfish -h / help command now returns an error for non-existent
446 commands (RHBZ#597145).
448 - New 'supported' command in guestfish to list optional groups of
449 commands which are supported by the daemon / configuration.
451 - virt-inspector and guestfish -i now work for filenames which
452 contain spaces (RHBZ#507810).
454 - Change the protocol to use link-local addresses, to avoid
455 conflicting with any address that the host might be using
458 - libguestfs now sets the correct time and timezone on filesystem
461 - Sort the domains into alphabetical order in virt-df.
463 - Make mkfs-b command work for FAT and NTFS by mapping the blocksize
464 parameter to the cluster size (RHBZ#599464).
466 - Add version numbers to Perl modules (RHBZ#521674).
468 - Localization now works for all the libguestfs tools (RHBZ#559963).
470 - Tools now support filesystem-on-image VMs (RHBZ#590167).
472 - virt-list-partitions has a '-t' option to show the total size of disks.
474 - Include extra Augeas lenses in the supermin appliance (Matthew Booth).
476 - Add error and close callbacks.
478 - Add explicit close method in the Perl API.
480 - Multiple fixes for RHEL 5 compatibility.
482 - Multiple fixes for Debian/Ubuntu compatibility.
484 - Multiple revisions to improve the documentation.
488 - Fix a potential DoS in virt-inspector and virt-v2v if a specially
489 crafted disk image contained a char device in place of one of the
490 configuration files that we read under /etc (RHBZ#582484).
494 - aug-clear - clear Augeas path
495 - available-all-groups - return a list of all optional groups
496 - base64-in - upload base64-encoded data to file
497 - base64-out - download file and encode as base64
498 - checksum-device - compute checksums on the contents of a device
499 - checksums-out - compute checksums of multiple files in a directory
500 - debug-upload - upload a file to the appliance
501 - fallocate64 - preallocate a file in the guest filesystem
502 - fill-pattern - fill a file with a repeating pattern of bytes
503 - get-umask - get the current umask
504 - lvresize-free - expand an LV to fill free space
505 - ntfsresize - resize an NTFS filesystem
506 - ntfsresize-size - resize an NTFS filesystem (with size)
507 - part-del - delete a partition
508 - part-get-bootable - get the bootable flag of a partition
509 - part-get-mbr-id - get the MBR type byte of a partition
510 - part-set-mbr-id - set the MBR type byte of a partition
511 - pvresize-size - resize a physical volume (with size)
512 - pwrite - write to part of a file
513 - resize2fs-size - resize an ext2/3/4 filesystem (with size)
514 - txz-in - unpack compressed tarball to directory (RHBZ#580556)
515 - txz-out - pack directory into compressed tarball (RHBZ#580556)
516 - vfs-label - get the filesystem label
517 - vfs-uuid - get the filesystem UUID
518 - vgscan - rescan for LVM physical volumes, volume groups and logical volumes
519 - write - create a new file
520 - zero-device - write zeroes to an entire device
524 - Extend the generator to support testing optional features.
525 - Stricter checks on input parameters to many calls (RHBZ#501893 RHBZ#501894)
526 - Extend the protocol to support sending arbitrary 8 bit data buffers.
527 - Ship 'BUGS' file with releases. This is a summary of the bugs in
528 the Red Hat Bugzilla database.
529 - Ship 'RELEASE-NOTES' file with releases, containing release notes.
530 - Unify supermin appliance building into one place, in febootstrap 2.7.
531 - Fix the protocol code to handle the case where both ends send cancel
532 messages at the same time.
536 - 612178 guestfish: using -m option in conjunction with --listen option causes appliance to die
537 - 610880 libguestfs should set broader read perms on tmpdir, so works in some situations when executed with umask 077
538 - 604691 OCaml bindings are not thread safe
539 - 603870 Updates to Spanish translation
540 - 602592 [RFE] expose guestfs_close in perl bindings
541 - 600977 virt-df -h --csv "Argument .. isn't numeric in printf"
542 - 599464 mkfs-b does not support vfat/ntfs
543 - 598807 add_cdrom does not work in RHEL 6
544 - 598309 part-list and several other cmd failed on libguestfs on RHEL5
545 - 597145 guestfish 'help' command should indicate error in exit status with an unknown command
546 - 597135 guestfish write-file cmd does not check "size" parameter
547 - 597118 A warning should be given in the help of mke2journal-L for the length of label
548 - 597112 get-e2uuid should use blkid instead of "tune2fs -l" to get filesystem UUID
549 - 596776 virt-inspector doesn't discover modprobe aliases on RHEL 3 guests
550 - 596763 Updates to Spanish translation
551 - 593292 Updates to Spanish translation
552 - 592883 can not edit files on images mounted with guestmount cmd
553 - 592360 Updates to Spanish translation
554 - 591250 virt-tar prints "tar_in: tar subcommand failed on directory" if the archive is compressed or not in the right format
555 - 591155 virt-tar prints "tar_in: tar subcommand failed on directory" if a disk image is not writable
556 - 591142 virt-inspector should give an error for unrecognized disk images
557 - 590167 virt-inspector and other virt tools should be able to handle filesystem-on-image VMs
558 - 589039 guestfish read-file cmd will cause daemon hang when read large files
559 - 588851 guestfs_launch() returns -1, but guestfs_last_error() == NULL
560 - 588763 libguestfs should use non-public or link-local addresses for appliance network
561 - 588733 Updates to Spanish translation
562 - 588651 guestfish 'strings-e' cmd does not give proper error message or hint
563 - 587484 lvresize can't reduce size of a volumn
564 - 585961 Updates to Spanish translation
565 - 585223 ntfsresize should support shrinking filesystems
566 - 585222 pvresize should support shrinking PVs
567 - 585221 resize2fs should support shrinking filesystems
568 - 584038 Updates to Spanish translation
569 - 583554 [FEAT] mknod-mode command is needed to set mode explicitly
570 - 583242 [RFE] guestfish should print outputs in a suitable base (eg. octal for modes)
571 - 582993 guestfish eats words when tab completing case (in)sensitive paths
572 - 582953 Misleading help information about lvcreate command
573 - 582948 mknod command doesn't make block, character or FIFO devices
574 - 582929 mknod doesn't check for invalid mode
575 - 582901 guestfish chmod/umask commands do not check invalid mode value
576 - 582899 guestfish:sparse is missed from command autocomplete list
577 - 582891 [Feature Request] behavior and return value of guestfish umask cmd should be changed
578 - 582548 [mknod] umask shouldn't take effect when mode is set explicitly
579 - 582484 some guestfish sub commands can not handle special files properly
580 - 582252 Updates to Spanish translation
581 - 581501 Updates to Spanish translation
582 - 580650 virt-inspector warns "No grub default specified at /usr/lib/perl5/Sys/Guestfs/Lib.pm at [...]"
583 - 580556 request for libguestfs to support .txz tarballs
584 - 580246 tar-in command hangs if uploading more than available space
585 - 580016 aug-ls in guestfish does not take augeas variable as argument
586 - 579664 guestfish doesn't report error when there is not enough space for image allocation
587 - 579608 multiple commands in guestfish can not work for symbol links
588 - 579155 libguestfs hangs if qemu doesn't start (in null vmchannel mode)
589 - 578407 the prefix '-' in sub-command isn't handled by guestfish in remote control mode
590 - 576879 libguestfs protocol loses synchronization if you 'upload' before mounting disks
591 - 559963 libguestfs Perl programs do set locale, but still localization doesn't work
592 - 521674 Perl modules are unversioned, but should carry version numbers
593 - 516096 Race condition in test_swapon_label_0: /sbin/blockdev: BLKRRPART: Device or resource busy
594 - 507810 guestfish -i / virt-inspector cannot handle spaces in filenames
595 - 502533 Updated Polish translation of libguestfs
596 - 501894 Some String parameters should be OptString
597 - 501893 String parameters should be checked for != NULL
598 - 501889 write-file does not support strings containing ASCII NUL
599 - 484986 grub-install fails on virtio disk
601 Release notes for previous versions of libguestfs
602 -------------------------------------------------
605 https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2009-November/msg00095.html
608 https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2009-August/msg00281.html
611 https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2009-July/msg00059.html
614 https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2009-July/msg00023.html
616 2009-04-01 : Initial announcement
617 http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/04/01/libguestfs-access-and-modify-virtual-machine-disk-images/