Ideas for the Python bindings:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-April/msg00114.html
-FTP server or FUSE?
--------------------
+FUSE API
+--------
-Originally we had intended to implement an NFS server inside the
-appliance, which would allow the guest filesystems to be mounted on
-the host, and large changes to be made. We eventually rejected the
-idea of using NFS, partly because it requires root to mount
-filesystems in the host, and partly because of problems handling UID
-mappings between host and guest filesystem.
-
-Then we look at implementing an FTP server instead. FTP clients are
-widely available for many languages, don't require root, and don't
-have any UID mapping problems. However there is the problem of
-getting the TCP connection into the guest, and that FTP requires a
-secondary data connection either in or out of the guest (the NFS
-situation is even more dire).
-
-Thirdly we looked at implementing a FUSE-based filesystem. This is
-plausible - it could be implemented just by adding the additional FUSE
-operations to the standard guestfs(3) API, and then implementing a
-simple FUSE daemon. (The FUSE website has some very helpful
-documentation and examples). I [RWMJ] am not particularly convinced
-that a FUSE-based filesystem would really be useful to anyone, but am
-prepared to accept patches if someone does all the work.
-
-See also the mountlo project:
-http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=121684&package_id=150116
+The API needs more test coverage, particularly lesser-used system
+calls.
+
+The big unresolved issue is UID/GID mapping between guest filesystem
+IDs and the host. It's not easy to automate this because you need
+extra details about the guest itself in order to get to its
+UID->username map (eg. /etc/passwd from the guest).
BufferIn
--------
General glibc / core programs:
chgrp
dd (?)
- utime / utimes / futimes / futimens / l..
more mk*temp calls
- trunc[ate??]
ext2 properties:
chattr
pivot_root
fts(3) / ftw(3)
-Swap space
-----------
-
-Allow swap space from the guest to be used. Is it a good idea?
-
Other initrd-* commands
-----------------------
Currently we can't do Perl "one-liners". ie. The current syntax for
any short Perl one-liner would be:
- perl -MSys::Guestfs -e '$g = Sys::Guestfs->new(); $g->add_drive ("foo"); $g->launch; $g->wait_ready; $g->mount ("/dev/sda1", "/"); ....'
+ perl -MSys::Guestfs -e '$g = Sys::Guestfs->new(); $g->add_drive ("foo"); $g->launch; $g->mount ("/dev/sda1", "/"); ....'
You can see we're well beyond a single line just getting to the point
of adding drives and mounting.
$h->set_autosync (1);
$h->add_drive_ro ($filename);
$h->launch ();
- $h->wait_ready ();
$h->mount_ro (\"/dev/sda1\", \"/\");
Command-line form would be:
perl -MSys::Guestfs::One -e 'inspect("guest.img"); cat ("/etc/fstab");'
How would editing files work?
+
+ntfsclone
+---------
+
+Useful imaging tool:
+http://man.linux-ntfs.org/ntfsclone.8.html
+
+Standard images
+---------------
+
+Equip guestfish with some standard images that it can load
+quickly, eg:
+
+ load ext2
+
+Maybe it's better to create these on the fly?
+
+virt-rescue pty
+---------------
+
+See:
+http://search.cpan.org/~rgiersig/IO-Tty-1.08/Pty.pm
+http://www.perlmonks.org/index.pl?node_id=582185
+
+Note that pty requires cooperation inside the C code too (there are
+two sides to a pty, and one has to be handled after the fork).
+
+virt-rescue TERM
+----------------
+
+Pass TERM from the library, through the kernel command line, to the
+init script.
+
+Windows-based daemon/appliance
+------------------------------
+
+See discussion on list:
+https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2009-November/msg00165.html
+
+virt-grow, virt-shrink
+----------------------
+
+Grow and shrink existing guests. The main problem comes with
+MBR-style partitions where you have to actually copy data around the
+disk (unless you only want to change the final partition).
+
+qemu locking
+------------
+
+Add -drive file=...,lock=exclusive and -drive file=...,lock=shared
+
+Change libguestfs and libvirt to do the right thing, so that multiple
+instances of qemu cannot stomp on each other.
\ No newline at end of file