1 TODO list for libguestfs
2 ======================================================================
4 This list contains random ideas and musings on features we could add
5 to libguestfs in future.
12 The API needs more test coverage, particularly lesser-used system
15 The big unresolved issue is UID/GID mapping between guest filesystem
16 IDs and the host. It's not easy to automate this because you need
17 extra details about the guest itself in order to get to its
18 UID->username map (eg. /etc/passwd from the guest).
20 febootstrap / debootstrap inside appliance
21 ------------------------------------------
23 This was originally proposed as a way to install new operating systems
24 in the appliance. However no one has come up with a workable
30 Complete the Haskell bindings (see discussion on haskell-cafe).
35 Complete the bind tests - must test the return values and error cases.
37 virt-inspector - make libvirt XML
38 ---------------------------------
40 It should be possible to generate libvirt XML from virt-inspector
41 data, at least partially. This would be just another output type so:
43 virt-inspector --libvirt guest.img
45 Note that recent versions of libvirt/virt-install allow guests to be
46 imported, so this is not so useful any more.
48 "Standalone/local mode"
49 -----------------------
51 Instead of running guestfsd (the daemon) inside qemu, there should be
52 an option to just run guestfsd directly.
54 The architecture in this mode would look like:
69 (1) This only makes sense if we are running as root.
71 (2) There is no console / kernel messages in this configuration, but
72 we might consider capturing stderr from the daemon.
74 (3) guestfs_config and guestfs_add_drive become no-ops.
76 Obviously in this configuration, commands are run directly on the
77 local machine's disks. You could just run the commands themselves
78 directly, but libguestfs provides a convenient API and language
79 bindings. Also deals with tricky stuff like parsing the output of the
80 LVM commands. Also we get to leverage other code such as
83 This is mainly useful from live CDs, ie. virt-p2v.
85 Should we bother having the daemon at all and just link the guestfsd
86 code directly into libguestfs?
88 Supermin appliance to febootstrap
89 ---------------------------------
91 Supermin appliance functionality should be moved into febootstrap.
93 Ideas for extra commands
94 ------------------------
96 General glibc / core programs:
123 Other initrd-* commands
124 -----------------------
131 Simple editing of configuration files
132 -------------------------------------
134 Some easy non-Augeas methods to edit configuration files.
137 replace /etc/file key value
139 which would look in /etc/file for any instances of
145 and replace them with
151 That would solve about 50% of reconfiguration needs, and for the
152 rest you'd use Augeas, 'download'+'upload' or 'edit'.
154 RWMJ: I had a go at implementing this, but it's quite error-prone to
155 do this sort of editing inside the C-based daemon code. It's far
156 better to do it with Augeas, or else to use an external language like
162 Currently we can't do Perl "one-liners". ie. The current syntax for
163 any short Perl one-liner would be:
165 perl -MSys::Guestfs -e '$g = Sys::Guestfs->new(); $g->add_drive ("foo"); $g->launch; $g->mount ("/dev/sda1", "/"); ....'
167 You can see we're well beyond a single line just getting to the point
168 of adding drives and mounting.
172 $h = create ($filename, \"/dev/sda1\" => \"/\");
174 $h = create ([$file1, $file2], \"/dev/sda1\" => \"/\");
176 To mount read-only, add C<ro =E<gt> 1> like this:
178 $h = create ($filename, \"/dev/sda1\" => \"/\", ro => 1);
180 which is equivalent to the following sequence of calls:
182 $h = Sys::Guestfs->new ();
183 $h->set_autosync (1);
184 $h->add_drive_ro ($filename);
186 $h->mount_ro (\"/dev/sda1\", \"/\");
188 Command-line form would be:
190 perl -MSys::Guestfs=:all -e '$_=create("guest.img", "/dev/sda1" => "/"); $_->cat ("/etc/fstab");'
192 That's not brief enough for one-liners, so we could have an extra
193 autogenerated module which creates a Sys::Guestfs handle singleton
194 (the handle is an implicit global variable as in guestfish), eg:
196 perl -MSys::Guestfs::One -e 'inspect("guest.img"); cat ("/etc/fstab");'
198 How would editing files work?
204 http://man.linux-ntfs.org/ntfsclone.8.html
210 http://search.cpan.org/~rgiersig/IO-Tty-1.08/Pty.pm
211 http://www.perlmonks.org/index.pl?node_id=582185
213 Note that pty requires cooperation inside the C code too (there are
214 two sides to a pty, and one has to be handled after the fork).
216 Windows-based daemon/appliance
217 ------------------------------
219 See discussion on list:
220 https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2009-November/msg00165.html
225 Add -drive file=...,lock=exclusive and -drive file=...,lock=shared
227 Change libguestfs and libvirt to do the right thing, so that multiple
228 instances of qemu cannot stomp on each other.
233 For multi-level disk images such as live CDs:
234 http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/07/15/unpack-the-russian-doll-of-a-f11-live-cd/
236 It's possible with libguestfs to recursively look for anything that
237 might be a filesystem, mount-{,loop} it and look in those, revealing
238 anything in a disk image.
240 However this won't work easily for VM disk images in the disk image.
241 One would have to download those to the host and launch another
244 List, mount filesystems by UUID and label
245 -----------------------------------------
248 http://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2009-August/msg00031.html]
250 List filesystems by UUID or label.
252 Mount filesystems by UUID or label. (I'm not really sure if we can do
253 this at the moment but we ought to be able to do it, and perhaps make
254 it easier by having a direct command).
256 Map filesystems to disk blocks
257 ------------------------------
259 Map files/filesystems/(any other object) to the actual disk
266 Integration with host intrusion systems
267 ---------------------------------------
269 Perfect way to monitor VMs from outside the VM. Look for file
270 hashes, log events, login/logout etc.
272 http://www.ossec.net/
273 http://la-samhna.de/samhain/
274 http://sourceforge.net/projects/aide/
275 http://osiris.shmoo.com/
276 http://sourceforge.net/projects/tripwire/
278 Resizing, shrinking, specifying sizes in guestfish
279 --------------------------------------------------
281 Owing to an oversight we don't really supporting shrinking
284 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=585221
285 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=585222
286 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=585223
288 But a related problem is how to specify sizes to guestfish, ie. "100M"
289 or "1G". Currently the specific alloc and sparse functions contain
290 code to parse these size strings, but that cannot be used anywhere
291 else that would take a byte count. This is awkward because some
292 commands take units of megabytes (lvresize, sfdiskM) or sectors
293 (part-add), with no unifying theme.