From: Richard Jones Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 10:31:39 +0000 (+0100) Subject: Improve documentation in README file. X-Git-Tag: 1.0.33~7 X-Git-Url: http://git.annexia.org/?a=commitdiff_plain;h=b8b89f509c353fb662794c58bc840c8468c6e18f;p=libguestfs.git Improve documentation in README file. --- diff --git a/README b/README index cefcd78..f167021 100644 --- a/README +++ b/README @@ -33,7 +33,11 @@ Requirements - febootstrap >= 2.0 -- XDR, rpcgen +- fakeroot + +- fakechroot >= 2.9 + +- XDR, rpcgen (on Linux these are provided by glibc) - (Optional) Augeas (http://augeas.net/) @@ -79,17 +83,66 @@ Finally run the tests: make check If everything works, you can install the library and tools by running -these commands as root: +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. At the moment we don't +provide Debian packages, and because of the appliance it's rather +complicated to provide a package which could be accepted into the +Debian repositories. Want to help? Please contact us. + + +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. + +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 +wrapper'. Qemu wrappers are described in the guestfs(3) manpage. + + Note on using KVM ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -If you are using x86-64, then by default the configure script will -look for qemu-kvm (KVM support). You will need a reasonably recent -processor for this to work. KVM is much faster than using plain QEMU. +By default the configure script will look for qemu-kvm (KVM support). +You will need a reasonably recent processor for this to work. KVM is +much faster than using plain Qemu. You may also need to enable KVM support for non-root users, by following these instructions: @@ -122,10 +175,11 @@ that in future we will be able to cross-compile the daemon. Mirroring tip ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -Having a local Fedora mirror makes a massive difference to the time it -takes to build and rebuild initramfs images. +On my machines I can usually rebuild the appliance in around 3 +minutes. If it takes much longer for you, use a local Fedora mirror +or squid. -Failing that, use squid to cache yum downloads, but read this first: +To use squid to cache yum downloads, read this first: https://lists.dulug.duke.edu/pipermail/yum/2006-August/009041.html (In brief, because yum chooses random mirrors each time, squid doesn't work very well with default yum configuration. To get around this, @@ -137,8 +191,24 @@ You will also need to substantially increase the squid configuration limits: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Using_Mock_to_test_package_builds#Using_Squid_to_Speed_Up_Mock_package_downloads -IntelligentMirror is another possibility, although I couldn't get it -to work for me. + +Porting to other Linux distros / non-Linux +---------------------------------------------------------------------- + +libguestfs itself should be fairly portable to other Linux +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/ Copyright and license information