+
+Visualization
+-------------
+
+Eric Sandeen pointed out the blktrace tool which is a better way of
+capturing traces than using patched qemu (see
+contrib/visualize-alignment). We would still use the same
+visualization tools in conjunction with blktrace traces.
+
+guestfish parsing
+-----------------
+
+At the moment guestfish uses an ad hoc parser which has many
+shortcomings. We should change to using a lex/yacc-based scanner and
+parser (there are better parsers out there, but yacc is sufficient and
+very widely available).
+
+The scanner must deal with the case of parsing a whole command string,
+eg. for a command that the user types in:
+
+ ><fs> add-drive-opts "/tmp/foo" readonly:true
+
+and also with parsing single words from the command line:
+
+ guestfish add-drive-opts /tmp/foo readonly:true
+
+Note the quotes are for scanning and don't indicate types.
+
+We should also allow variables and expressions as part of this new
+parsing code, eg:
+
+ set roots inspect-os
+ set product inspect-get-product-name %{roots[0]}
+
+% is better than $ because of shell escaping and confusion with shell
+variables.
+
+Can we combine this with ability to set and read environment
+variables? Currently guestfish uses many environment variables like
+$EDITOR without any corresponding ability to set them.
+
+ set EDITOR /usr/bin/emacs
+ echo $EDITOR # or %{EDITOR}
+ edit /etc/resolv.conf
+
+live CD inspection for Windows 7
+--------------------------------
+
+Windows 7 install CDs are quite different and pretty impenetrable.
+There are no obvious files to parse.
+
+More ntfs tools
+---------------
+
+ntfsprogs actually has a lot more useful tools than we currently
+use. Interesting ones are:
+
+ntfslabel: display or change filesystem label (we should unify all
+ set*label APIs into a single set_vfs_label which can deal with any
+ filesystem)
+
+ntfsclone: clone, image, restore, rescue NTFS
+
+ntfsinfo: print various information about NTFS volume and files
+
+ntfs streams: extract alternate streams from NTFS files
+
+ntfsck: checker for NTFS filesystems
+
+Undelete files
+--------------
+
+Two useful tools:
+
+ - ext2undelete
+ - ntfsundelete
+
+More mkfs_opts options
+----------------------
+
+Useful options to offer:
+ - Set label.
+ - Set UUID.
+
+Use /proc/self/mountinfo
+------------------------
+
+This file contains lots of interesting information about
+what is mounted and where. eg:
+
+ 16 21 0:3 / /proc rw,relatime - proc /proc rw
+ 17 21 0:16 / /sys rw,relatime - sysfs /sys rw,seclabel
+ 18 23 0:5 / /dev rw,relatime - devtmpfs udev rw,seclabel,size=1906740k,nr_inodes=476685,mode=755
+ 26 21 253:3 / /home rw,relatime - ext4 /dev/mapper/vg-lv_home rw,seclabel,barrier=1,data=ordered
+
+This could be used instead of current hairy code to parse the output
+of the 'mount' command. We could add new APIs to return kernel mount
+options, type of filesystem at a mountpoint etc.
+
+guestfish drive letters
+-----------------------
+
+There should be an option to mount all Windows drives as separate
+paths, like C: => /c/, D: => /d/ etc.
+
+More inspection features
+------------------------
+
+- last shutdown time
+- DHCP address
+- last time the software was updated
+- last user who logged in
+- lastlog, last, who
+
+Integrate virt-inspector with CMDBs
+-----------------------------------
+
+Either integrate virt-inspector with Configuration Management
+Databases (CMDBs) or at least check that virt-inspector produces the
+right range of data so that integration would be possible. The
+standards for CMDBs come from the DMTF, see eg:
+
+http://dmtf.org/news/pr/2009/7/dmtf-releases-cmdbf-standard-federating-configuration-management-data
+
+Efficient way to visit all files
+--------------------------------
+
+https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/tip-audit-virtual-machine-for-setuid-files/#content
+
+A naive method would look like:
+
+ g#visit ~return_stats:true "/" (
+ fun pathname stat ->
+ ...
+ )
+
+However this has two disadvantages:
+
+ - requires hand-written custom bindings in each language
+ - unclear about locking, thread-safety and re-entrancy of handle g
+
+A better way would be to have some sort of explicit "download all
+filenames and stat structures", which could then be iterated over:
+
+ let files = g#find_opts ~return_stats:true "/" in
+ List.iter (
+ fun pathname stat ->
+ ...
+ )
+
+The problem with this is that 'files' is going to be larger than a
+protocol buffer.
+
+This leads to thinking about changes to the protocol / generator to
+make this simpler. The proposal would be to add RBigStringList,
+RBigStructList [or RBig (Ranytype ...)]. These would work like
+FileOut, in that they would use file streaming to stream XDR
+structures (probably written to a file on the library side).
+Generated code would hide most of the implementation.
+
+We also need to think about security issues: is it possible for the
+daemon to keep sending back data forever, and if so what happens on
+the library side.
+
+[Users can now use virt-ls to solve some of these problems, but it is
+not a general solution at the API level]
+
+Interactive disk creator
+------------------------
+
+An interactive disk creator program.
+
+Attach method for disconnected operation
+----------------------------------------
+
+http://libguestfs.org/guestfs.3.html#guestfs_set_attach_method
+
+"Librarian" has an idea that he should be able to attach to a regular
+appliance, but disconnect from it and reconnect to it later. This
+would be some sort of modified attach method (see link above).
+
+The complexity here is that we would no longer have access to
+stdin/stdout (or we'd have to direct that somewhere else).