X-Git-Url: http://git.annexia.org/?a=blobdiff_plain;f=README;h=a484b81eb7d93f18f1081b7cb1d8b5c35ed4af79;hb=bc484e99c23842aa67d2b533023eeaaa30fd6868;hp=e376cc7148b69fbc1aa41a124735dc84864b5b20;hpb=1f6bc26fc0967c6e4ae4a4514d9734288839c0fd;p=libguestfs.git diff --git a/README b/README index e376cc7..a484b81 100644 --- a/README +++ b/README @@ -13,16 +13,19 @@ schemes, qcow, qcow2, vmdk. Libguestfs provides ways to enumerate guest storage (eg. partitions, LVs, what filesystem is in each LV, etc.). It can also run commands -in the context of the guest. Also you can access filesystems over FTP. +in the context of the guest. Also you can access filesystems over +FUSE. Libguestfs is a library that can be linked with C and C++ management -programs (or management programs written in OCaml, Perl, Python, Ruby, Java -or Haskell). You can also use it from shell scripts or the command line. +programs (or management programs written in OCaml, Perl, Python, Ruby, +Java, PHP, Haskell or C#). You can also use it from shell scripts or the +command line. -Libguestfs was written by Richard W.M. Jones (rjones@redhat.com). -For discussion please use the fedora-virt mailing list: +Libguestfs was written by Richard W.M. Jones (rjones@redhat.com) and +hacked on by lots of other people. For discussion, development, +patches, etc. please use the mailing list: - https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-virt + http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/libguestfs Home page @@ -34,28 +37,44 @@ Home page Requirements ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -- recent QEMU >= 0.10 with vmchannel support - http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2009-02/msg01042.html +- recent QEMU >= 0.12 with virtio-serial support -- febootstrap >= 2.3 +- febootstrap >= 3.0 + *NB*: febootstrap 2.x WILL NOT WORK + febootstrap 3.x is distro-independent, and is required on + Debian and other distros too -- fakeroot +- XDR, rpcgen (on Linux these are provided by glibc) -- fakechroot >= 2.9 +- pcre (Perl Compatible Regular Expressions C library) (optional) -- XDR, rpcgen (on Linux these are provided by glibc) +- libmagic (the library that corresponds to the 'file' command) (optional) + +- libvirt (optional) + +- libxml2 (optional) + +- Augeas (http://augeas.net/) (optional) + +- gperf - squashfs-tools (mksquashfs only) -- (Optional) Augeas (http://augeas.net/) +- genisoimage / mkisofs + +- hivex >= 1.2.1 (http://libguestfs.org/download) + +- (Optional) Berkeley DB 'db_dump' and 'db_load' utilities + (db4-utils or db4.X-util or similar) -- perldoc (pod2man, pod2text) to generate the manual pages and - other documentation. +- (Optional) FUSE to build the FUSE module + +- perldoc (pod2man, pod2text, pod2html) to generate the manual pages + and other documentation. - (Optional) Readline to have nicer command-line editing in guestfish. -- (Optional) 'reged' program from chntpw to decode Windows registry - entries (http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/) +- (Optional) xmllint to validate virt-inspector RELAX NG schema - (Optional) OCaml if you want to rebuild the generated files, and also to build the OCaml bindings @@ -73,8 +92,21 @@ bindings - (Optional) GHC if you want to build the Haskell bindings -- (Optional) Perl XML::XPath, Sys::Virt modules (for libvirt support -in virt-inspector). +- (Optional) Perl Sys::Virt module. + +- (Optional) Perl Win::Hivex module. + +- (Optional) Perl Pod::Usage module. + +- (Optional) Perl Test::More module (from perl Test::Simple). + +- (Optional) Perl String::ShellQuote module. + +- (Optional, but highly recommended) perl-libintl for translating perl code. + +- (Optional) po4a for translating manpages and POD files. + +- (Optional) PHP, phpize if you want to build the PHP bindings Running ./configure will check you have all the requirements installed on your machine. @@ -102,52 +134,15 @@ this command as root: make install -Fedora ----------------------------------------------------------------------- - -We provide packages for Fedora >= 11 in Fedora. Use those, or build -from our source RPMs - it's far simpler that way. - -You can compile libguestfs on Fedora 10 but you cannot use it with the -version of qemu in Fedora 10. You need to compile your own qemu, see -section 'qemu' below. - - -RHEL / EPEL / CentOS etc ----------------------------------------------------------------------- - -We provide packages in EPEL which cover RHEL/CentOS >= 5. Use those -or build from our source RPMs. - - -Debian ----------------------------------------------------------------------- - -libguestfs should build and run on Debian. - -febootstrap, yum, rpm, fakeroot, fakechroot are all packaged in -Debian. - -Please see the fedora-virt mailing list for the status of libguestfs -in Debian. - - qemu ---------------------------------------------------------------------- By far the most common problem is with broken or incompatible qemu releases. -First of all, you need qemu >= 0.10.4, which contains a vmchannel -implementation. There are several, conflicting, incompatible things -called 'vmchannel' which at one time or another have been added or -proposed for qemu/KVM. The _only_ one we support is this one: - - http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2009-02/msg01042.html - -Secondly, different versions of qemu have problems booting the -appliance for different reasons. This varies between versions of -qemu, and Linux distributions which add their own patches. +Different versions of qemu have problems booting the appliance for +different reasons. This varies between versions of qemu, and Linux +distributions which add their own patches. If you find a problem, you could try using your own qemu built from source (qemu is very easy to build from source), with a 'qemu @@ -174,75 +169,36 @@ On some systems, the chmod will not survive a reboot, and you will need to make edits to the udev configuration. -Supermin appliance +vmchannel ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -If you configure with --enable-supermin then we will build a supermin -appliance (supermin = super-minimized). This is a very specialized -appliance which is built on-the-fly at runtime (specifically, when you -call guestfs_launch). +Previous versions of libguestfs required something called "vmchannel". +Vmchannel is a special device given to virtual machines which allows +them to communicate in some way with the host, often (but not always) +without using a traditional network device. In reality, there is no +one thing called "vmchannel". This idea has been reimplemented +several times under the name vmchannel, and other hypervisors have +their own incompatible implementation(s) too. -The normal appliance is a self-contained Linux operating system, based -on the Fedora/RHEL/CentOS Linux distro. So it contains a complete -copy of all the libraries and programs needed, like kernel, libc, -bash, coreutils etc etc. +In libguestfs <= 1.0.71, we required a specific vmchannel which is +properly known as "guestfwd" and has been upstream in qemu since here: -The supermin appliance removes the kernel and all the executable -libraries and programs from the appliance. That just leaves a -skeleton of config files and some data files, which is obviously -massively smaller than the normal appliance. At runtime we rebuild -the appliance on-the-fly from the libraries and programs on the host -(eg. pulling in the real /lib/libc.so, the real /bin/bash etc.) - -Although this process of rebuilding the appliance each time sounds -slow, it turns out to be faster than using the prebuilt appliance. -(Most of the saving comes from not compressing the appliance - it -transpires that decompressing the appliance is the slowest part of the -whole boot sequence). On my machine, a new appliance can be built in -under a fifth of a second, and the boot time is several seconds -shorter. - -The big advantage of the supermin appliance for distributions like -Fedora is that it gets security fixes automatically from the host, so -there is no need to rebuild the whole of libguestfs for a security -update in some underlying library. - -There are several DISADVANTAGES: - -It won't work at all except in very narrow, controlled cases like the -Fedora packaging case. We control the dependencies of the libguestfs -RPM tightly to ensure that the required binaries are actually present -on the host. - -Furthermore there are certain unlikely changes in the packages on the -host which could break a supermin appliance, eg. an updated library -which depends on an additional data file. - -Also supermin appliances are subjected to changes in the host kernel -which might break compatibility with qemu -- these are, of course, -real bugs in any case. + http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2009-02/msg01042.html -Lastly, supermin appliances really can't be moved between branches of -distributions (eg. built on Fedora 12 and moved to Fedora 10) because -they are not self-contained and they rely on certain libraries being -around. You shouldn't do this anyway. +In libguestfs >= 1.0.71 we don't require any vmchannel implementation, +as long as qemu has been compiled with support for SLIRP (user mode +networking, or "-net user"), which is almost always the case. -Use supermin appliances with caution. +In libguestfs >= 1.5.4 we switched again to using qemu's virtio-serial +and removed all the other vmchannels and the SLIRP channel. -Notes on cross-architecture support +Supermin appliance ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -At the moment we basically don't support cross-architecture or -32-on-64. This limits what is possible for some guests. Filesystem -operations and FTP export will work fine, but running commands in -guests may not be possible. - -To enable this requires work for cross-architecture and 32-on-64 -support in febootstrap, fakeroot and fakechroot. - -The daemon/ directory contains its own configure script. This is so -that in future we will be able to cross-compile the daemon. +In libguestfs >= 1.7.19 the supermin appliance is the default and only +supported form of appliance. For more information see febootstrap +(http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/febootstrap/). Mirroring tip @@ -273,21 +229,14 @@ distributions. Non-Linux ports are trickier, but we will accept patches if they aren't too invasive. The main porting issues are with the dependencies needed to build the -appliance. You will need to find or port the following packages -first: - - - fakeroot - - fakechroot - - python - - rpm-python http://www.rpm.org/ - - yum http://yum.baseurl.org/ - - febootstrap http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/febootstrap/ +appliance. You will need to port the febootstrap first +(http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/febootstrap/). Copyright and license information ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -Copyright (C) 2009 Red Hat Inc. +Copyright (C) 2009-2010 Red Hat Inc. The library is distributed under the LGPLv2+. The programs are distributed under the GPLv2+. Please see the files COPYING and