1 Libguestfs is tools and a library for accessing and modifying guest
2 disk images. For more information see the home page:
6 For discussion, development, patches, etc. please use the mailing
9 http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/libguestfs
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15 - recent QEMU >= 0.13 with virtio-serial support
17 - kernel >= 2.6.34 with virtio-serial support enabled. virtio-block
18 and virtio-serial support are not required but highly recommended.
20 - febootstrap >= 3.0 (recommended >= 3.3)
21 *NB*: febootstrap 2.x WILL NOT WORK
22 febootstrap 3.x is distro-independent, and is required on
23 Debian and other distros too
25 - XDR, rpcgen (on Linux these are provided by glibc)
27 - pcre (Perl Compatible Regular Expressions C library) (optional)
29 - libmagic (the library that corresponds to the 'file' command) (optional)
35 - Augeas (http://augeas.net/) (optional)
39 - squashfs-tools (mksquashfs only)
41 - genisoimage / mkisofs
43 - hivex >= 1.2.1 (http://libguestfs.org/download)
45 - (Optional) Berkeley DB 'db_dump' and 'db_load' utilities
46 (db4-utils or db4.X-util or similar)
48 - (Optional) FUSE to build the FUSE module
50 - perldoc (pod2man, pod2text, pod2html) to generate the manual pages
51 and other documentation.
53 - (Optional) Readline to have nicer command-line editing in guestfish.
55 - (Optional) xmllint to validate virt-inspector RELAX NG schema
57 - (Optional) OCaml if you want to rebuild the generated files, and
58 also to build the OCaml bindings
60 - (Optional) Perl if you want to build the perl bindings
62 - (Optional) Python if you want to build the python bindings
64 - (Optional) Ruby, rake if you want to build the ruby bindings
66 - (Optional) Java, JNI, jpackage-utils if you want to build the java
69 - (Optional) GHC if you want to build the Haskell bindings
71 - (Optional) Perl Sys::Virt module.
73 - (Optional) Perl Win::Hivex module.
75 - (Optional) Perl Pod::Usage module.
77 - (Optional) Perl Test::More module (from perl Test::Simple).
79 - (Optional) Perl String::ShellQuote module.
81 - (Optional, but highly recommended) perl-libintl for translating perl code.
83 - po4a for translating manpages and POD files.
84 This is optional when compiling from the tarball, but mandatory
85 if you compile from git.
87 - (Optional) PHP, phpize if you want to build the PHP bindings
89 - (Optional, but highly recommended) getfacl, getfattr
91 Running ./configure will check you have all the requirements installed
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98 Then make the daemon, library and root filesystem:
103 Finally run the tests:
107 If everything works, you can install the library and tools by running
108 this command as root:
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116 By far the most common problem is with broken or incompatible
119 Different versions of qemu have problems booting the appliance for
120 different reasons. This varies between versions of qemu, and Linux
121 distributions which add their own patches.
123 If you find a problem, you could try using your own qemu built from
124 source (qemu is very easy to build from source), with a 'qemu
125 wrapper'. Qemu wrappers are described in the guestfs(3) manpage.
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131 By default the configure script will look for qemu-kvm (KVM support).
132 You will need a reasonably recent processor for this to work. KVM is
133 much faster than using plain Qemu.
135 You may also need to enable KVM support for non-root users, by following
138 http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/FAQ#How_can_I_use_kvm_with_a_non-privileged_user.3F
140 On some systems, this will work too:
144 On some systems, the chmod will not survive a reboot, and you will
145 need to make edits to the udev configuration.
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151 Previous versions of libguestfs required something called "vmchannel".
152 Vmchannel is a special device given to virtual machines which allows
153 them to communicate in some way with the host, often (but not always)
154 without using a traditional network device. In reality, there is no
155 one thing called "vmchannel". This idea has been reimplemented
156 several times under the name vmchannel, and other hypervisors have
157 their own incompatible implementation(s) too.
159 In libguestfs <= 1.0.71, we required a specific vmchannel which is
160 properly known as "guestfwd" and has been upstream in qemu since here:
162 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2009-02/msg01042.html
164 In libguestfs >= 1.0.71 we don't require any vmchannel implementation,
165 as long as qemu has been compiled with support for SLIRP (user mode
166 networking, or "-net user"), which is almost always the case.
168 In libguestfs >= 1.5.4 we switched again to using qemu's virtio-serial
169 and removed all the other vmchannels and the SLIRP channel.
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175 In libguestfs >= 1.7.19 the supermin appliance is the default and only
176 supported form of appliance. For more information see febootstrap
177 (http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/febootstrap/).
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183 On my machines I can usually rebuild the appliance in around 3
184 minutes. If it takes much longer for you, use a local distro mirror
187 To use squid to cache yum downloads, read this first:
188 https://lists.dulug.duke.edu/pipermail/yum/2006-August/009041.html
189 (In brief, because yum chooses random mirrors each time, squid doesn't
190 work very well with default yum configuration. To get around this,
191 choose a Fedora mirror which is close to you, set this with
192 './configure --with-mirror=[...]', and then proxy the whole lot
193 through squid by setting http_proxy environment variable).
195 You will also need to substantially increase the squid configuration
197 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Using_Mock_to_test_package_builds#Using_Squid_to_Speed_Up_Mock_package_downloads
200 Porting to other Linux distros / non-Linux
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203 libguestfs itself should be fairly portable to other Linux
204 distributions. Non-Linux ports are trickier, but we will accept
205 patches if they aren't too invasive.
207 The main porting issues are with the dependencies needed to build the
208 appliance. You will need to port the febootstrap first
209 (http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/febootstrap/).
212 Copyright and license information
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215 Copyright (C) 2009-2010 Red Hat Inc.
217 The library is distributed under the LGPLv2+. The programs are
218 distributed under the GPLv2+. Please see the files COPYING and
219 COPYING.LIB for full license information.