[libguestfs.git] / RELEASE-NOTES

Release notes for libguestfs 1.6.0
----------------------------------

These release notes only cover the differences from the previous
stable/dev branch split (1.4.0).  For detailed changelogs, please see
the git repository, or the ChangeLog file distributed in the tarball.

New features

 - Use a new method for creating and caching the appliance.  This
   greatly improves the performance of libguestfs, often by a factor
   of x 4 to x 5.

 - Support for guest inspection (like virt-inspector) via the ordinary
   API and all language bindings.  'guestfish -i' option is as a side-
   effect much quicker.

 - virt-inspector and core inspection API can now detect guests running:
   Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Windows, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS,
   Scientific Linux, Gentoo, Pardus, Arch Linux, MeeGo.

 - Support for LUKS whole-disk encryption in guests.

 - PHP bindings.

 - Progress messages (and progress bars in guestfish and virt-resize)
   for certain long-running operations.

 - virt-df is now much more efficient.  Use '--one-per-guest' to restore
   the old per-guest isolation behaviour.

 - guestfish 'copy-in' and 'copy-out' commands for copying files and
   directories recursively in and out of the guest.

 - guestfish 'hexedit' command for doing binary edits to devices and
   files.

 - Change guestfish -i syntax to allow commands to be specified on the
   command line (retaining backwards compatibility).

 - guestfish '-d <domain>' for adding disks from libvirt domains.

 - guestfish '-N' option supports several new prepared disk image types:
         lvfs : disk with LV formatted with filesystem
           lv : disk with LV
     bootroot : boot+root
   bootrootlv : boot and root on LV

 - guestfish 'more' and 'edit' commands now work with arbitrary files.

 - guestfish '--echo-keys' option allows you to echo keys/passphrases
   while typing them.

 - guestmount now supports -a / -d / -i options, like guestfish.

 - Use virtio-serial for communications with the appliance.  This
   also has a major performance benefit.

 - virt-edit '-b' option to create a backup of edited files.

 - virt-edit '-e' option for non-interactive edits to files.

 - Ability to capture core dumps from the appliance (thanks Matthew Booth).

 - virt-rescue now shuts down cleanly (thanks Matthew Booth).

 - virt-rescue now has a --network option to enable network access.

 - virt-resize can now handle guests which use GPT partition table format.

 - virt-resize has better support for shrinking guests.

 - virt-resize supports qcow2-format guests.

 - $TMPDIR can be used to override almost all temporary directory usage.

 - OCaml users can use an alternate OO-style of coding, eg. g#launch ()

 - The API supports calls which take optional parameters, eg.
     $g->add_drive_opts ("disk", readonly => 1);

 - Trace output now escapes and shortens large strings (thanks
   Matthew Booth).

 - Autosync is now on by default, resulting in more reliable behaviour
   when the handle is closed.

 - virt-df --uuid option allows you to follow a domain across migration
   and renaming.

 - Translations of manual pages.

Security

 - CVE-2010-3851 libguestfs: missing disk format specifier when adding a disk
   https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2010-October/msg00036.html
   This is comprehensively fixed in this release, and the fix will be
   backported to the other stable branches after more testing.

 - virt-inspector no longer relies on untrusted guest code to list
   applications in some guests.

New APIs

  download-offset, file-architecture, findfs-label, findfs-uuid,
  inspect-os, inspect-get-arch, inspect-get-distro,
  inspect-get-filesystems, inspect-get-major-version,
  inspect-get-minor-version, inspect-get-mountpoints,
  inspect-get-product-name, inspect-get-type, is-blockdev, is-chardev,
  is-fifo, is-lv, is-socket, is-symlink, list-filesystems, luks-add-key,
  luks-close, luks-format, luks-format-cipher, luks-kill-slot,
  luks-open, luks-open-ro, lvm-clear-filter, lvm-canonical-lv-name,
  lvm-set-filter, part-to-dev, pread-device, pwrite-device,
  upload-offset

Internals

 - Use size_t for loop iterators.
 - Refactor the library code into separate files.
 - Refactor the generator code into separate files.
 - Generate guestfish commands.
 - guestfish & guestmount options processing is unified.
 - Protocol changes:
     error message size increased to 64K
     send errno to library
 - Add 'make bindist' to make a binary distribution.
 - Cleaner behaviour under valgrind.
 - More testing of the guestfish command line options and libvirt
   integration.
 - The Perl inspection code is no longer used by any of the tools.

Bugs fixed

 - 646822 libguestfs trace mode should not print long binary strings
 - 646821 virt-df should have --uuid option
 - 646432 /dev/mapper paths should not be returned from guestfs_mountpoints
 - 643624 libguestfs tools documentation should describe how to quote guest domain names from shell
 - 642934 No way to specify disk format when adding a disk to libguestfs
 - 642933 guestfs_list_filesystems should be used in all possible places
 - 642932 guestmount options should match guestfish options
 - 642930 virt-inspector (Sys::Guestfs::Lib) should use C inspection APIs
 - 642929 C inspection code should ignore /dev/fd* in /etc/fstab
 - 642826 virt-resize converts any other image format to raw without notifying user, instructions do not account for this
 - 640961 Document that grub-install might be needed for old Linux guests after virt-resize
 - 639986 virt-df --csv does not properly quote " in libvirt domain names
 - 639405 Interrupted cached appliance creation leaves libguestfs unusable
 - 638901 Appliance filename should not contain repository name
 - 638899 /dev/mapper paths should not be returned from C inspection APIs
 - 636918 Updates to Spanish translation
 - 636061 [abrt] guestfish-1.2.11-1.fc12: malloc_consolidate: Process /usr/bin/guestfish was killed by signal 11 (SIGSEGV)
 - 635969 glob echo mkfs ext2 /dev/vd[b-t]1 prints garbage
 - 634246 guestfs_part_get_parttype returns "loop" when run against a partition, LV or filesystem
 - 633766 virt-resize --shrink fails
 - 633357 Updates to Spanish translation
 - 633096 virt-resize calculates block device size incorrectly, doesn't work with qcow2 target
 - 629593 Dutch translation added
 - 627556 Updates to Spanish translations of libguestfs
 - 626843 Updates to Spanish translations
 - 619793 [RFE] Need a way to determine if a particular block device is a logical volume
 - 618556 virt-rescue return none zero value when exit
 - 617200 mount operation failed and hung on some images which running in read-only mode
 - 610880 libguestfs should set broader read perms on tmpdir, so works in some situations when executed with umask 077
 - 599503 document that mkmountpoint and umount-all cannot be mixed
 - 571714 Running virt-df on disk image relabels it, so qemu can no longer write to it.
 - 502533 Updated Polish translation of libguestfs

Release notes for libguestfs 1.4.0
----------------------------------

These release notes only cover the differences from the previous
stable/dev branch split (1.2.0).  For detailed changelogs, please see
the git repository, or the ChangeLog file distributed in the tarball.

New features

 - guestfish lets you choose a prepared disk image, eg:
     guestfish -N fs:ext4

 - Add write support to guestmount (FUSE) module.

 - virt-resize can now resize the content of partitions and logical
   volumes in the guest, and we have better support for shrinking guests.

 - Bash tab-completion script for guestfish.

 - Add ZFS support to virt-rescue.

 - New tool 'virt-make-fs' for creating filesystems with content.

 - Allow suffixes on any guestfish number parameter, eg. "1M".

 - guestfish 'man' command opens the manual page.

 - guestfish supports a "heredoc" syntax for uploading files:
     upload -<<_end_ /foo
     content
     _end_

 - Some guestfish commands now print their output in octal or hex
   where appropriate (RHBZ#583242).

 - Allow dash prefix on guestfish command line.  This ignores any
   error from the second command:                   (RHBZ#578407)
     guestfish -- cmd1 : -cmd2 : cmd3

 - guestfish -h / help command now returns an error for non-existent
   commands (RHBZ#597145).

 - New 'supported' command in guestfish to list optional groups of
   commands which are supported by the daemon / configuration.

 - virt-inspector and guestfish -i now work for filenames which
   contain spaces (RHBZ#507810).

 - Change the protocol to use link-local addresses, to avoid
   conflicting with any address that the host might be using
   (RHBZ#588763).

 - libguestfs now sets the correct time and timezone on filesystem
   modifications.

 - Sort the domains into alphabetical order in virt-df.

 - Make mkfs-b command work for FAT and NTFS by mapping the blocksize
   parameter to the cluster size (RHBZ#599464).

 - Add version numbers to Perl modules (RHBZ#521674).

 - Localization now works for all the libguestfs tools (RHBZ#559963).

 - Tools now support filesystem-on-image VMs (RHBZ#590167).

 - virt-list-partitions has a '-t' option to show the total size of disks.

 - Include extra Augeas lenses in the supermin appliance (Matthew Booth).

 - Add error and close callbacks.

 - Add explicit close method in the Perl API.

 - Multiple fixes for RHEL 5 compatibility.

 - Multiple fixes for Debian/Ubuntu compatibility.

 - Multiple revisions to improve the documentation.

Security

 - Fix a potential DoS in virt-inspector and virt-v2v if a specially
   crafted disk image contained a char device in place of one of the
   configuration files that we read under /etc (RHBZ#582484).

New APIs

 - aug-clear - clear Augeas path
 - available-all-groups - return a list of all optional groups
 - base64-in - upload base64-encoded data to file
 - base64-out - download file and encode as base64
 - checksum-device - compute checksums on the contents of a device
 - checksums-out - compute checksums of multiple files in a directory
 - debug-upload - upload a file to the appliance
 - fallocate64 - preallocate a file in the guest filesystem
 - fill-pattern - fill a file with a repeating pattern of bytes
 - get-umask - get the current umask
 - lvresize-free - expand an LV to fill free space
 - ntfsresize - resize an NTFS filesystem
 - ntfsresize-size - resize an NTFS filesystem (with size)
 - part-del - delete a partition
 - part-get-bootable - get the bootable flag of a partition
 - part-get-mbr-id - get the MBR type byte of a partition
 - part-set-mbr-id - set the MBR type byte of a partition
 - pvresize-size - resize a physical volume (with size)
 - pwrite - write to part of a file
 - resize2fs-size - resize an ext2/3/4 filesystem (with size)
 - txz-in - unpack compressed tarball to directory (RHBZ#580556)
 - txz-out - pack directory into compressed tarball (RHBZ#580556)
 - vfs-label - get the filesystem label
 - vfs-uuid - get the filesystem UUID
 - vgscan - rescan for LVM physical volumes, volume groups and logical volumes
 - write - create a new file
 - zero-device - write zeroes to an entire device

Internals

 - Extend the generator to support testing optional features.
 - Stricter checks on input parameters to many calls (RHBZ#501893 RHBZ#501894)
 - Extend the protocol to support sending arbitrary 8 bit data buffers.
 - Ship 'BUGS' file with releases.  This is a summary of the bugs in
   the Red Hat Bugzilla database.
 - Ship 'RELEASE-NOTES' file with releases, containing release notes.
 - Unify supermin appliance building into one place, in febootstrap 2.7.
 - Fix the protocol code to handle the case where both ends send cancel
   messages at the same time.

Bugs fixed

 - 612178 guestfish: using -m option in conjunction with --listen option causes appliance to die
 - 610880 libguestfs should set broader read perms on tmpdir, so works in some situations when executed with umask 077
 - 604691 OCaml bindings are not thread safe
 - 603870 Updates to Spanish translation
 - 602592 [RFE] expose guestfs_close in perl bindings
 - 600977 virt-df -h --csv "Argument .. isn't numeric in printf"
 - 599464 mkfs-b does not support vfat/ntfs
 - 598807 add_cdrom does not work in RHEL 6
 - 598309 part-list and several other cmd failed on libguestfs on RHEL5
 - 597145 guestfish 'help' command should indicate error in exit status with an unknown command
 - 597135 guestfish write-file cmd does not check "size" parameter
 - 597118 A warning should be given in the help of mke2journal-L for the length of label
 - 597112 get-e2uuid should use blkid instead of "tune2fs -l" to get filesystem UUID
 - 596776 virt-inspector doesn't discover modprobe aliases on RHEL 3 guests
 - 596763 Updates to Spanish translation
 - 593292 Updates to Spanish translation
 - 592883 can not edit files on  images mounted with guestmount cmd
 - 592360 Updates to Spanish translation
 - 591250 virt-tar prints "tar_in: tar subcommand failed on directory" if the archive is compressed or not in the right format
 - 591155 virt-tar prints "tar_in: tar subcommand failed on directory" if a disk image is not writable
 - 591142 virt-inspector should give an error for unrecognized disk images
 - 590167 virt-inspector and other virt tools should be able to handle filesystem-on-image VMs
 - 589039 guestfish read-file cmd will cause daemon hang when read large files
 - 588851 guestfs_launch() returns -1, but guestfs_last_error() == NULL
 - 588763 libguestfs should use non-public or link-local addresses for appliance network
 - 588733 Updates to Spanish translation
 - 588651 guestfish 'strings-e' cmd does not give proper error message or hint
 - 587484 lvresize can't reduce size of a volumn
 - 585961 Updates to Spanish translation
 - 585223 ntfsresize should support shrinking filesystems
 - 585222 pvresize should support shrinking PVs
 - 585221 resize2fs should support shrinking filesystems
 - 584038 Updates to Spanish translation
 - 583554 [FEAT] mknod-mode command is needed to set mode explicitly
 - 583242 [RFE] guestfish should print outputs in a suitable base (eg. octal for modes)
 - 582993 guestfish eats words when tab completing case (in)sensitive paths
 - 582953 Misleading help information about lvcreate command
 - 582948 mknod command doesn't make block, character or FIFO devices
 - 582929 mknod doesn't check for invalid mode
 - 582901 guestfish chmod/umask commands do not check invalid mode value
 - 582899 guestfish:sparse is missed from command autocomplete list
 - 582891 [Feature Request] behavior and return value of guestfish umask cmd should be changed
 - 582548 [mknod] umask shouldn't take effect when mode is set explicitly
 - 582484 some guestfish sub commands can not handle special files properly
 - 582252 Updates to Spanish translation
 - 581501 Updates to Spanish translation
 - 580650 virt-inspector warns "No grub default specified at /usr/lib/perl5/Sys/Guestfs/Lib.pm at [...]"
 - 580556 request for libguestfs to support .txz tarballs
 - 580246 tar-in command hangs if uploading more than available space
 - 580016 aug-ls in guestfish does not take augeas variable as argument
 - 579664 guestfish doesn't report error when there is not enough space for image allocation
 - 579608 multiple commands in guestfish can not work for symbol links
 - 579155 libguestfs hangs if qemu doesn't start (in null vmchannel mode)
 - 578407 the prefix '-' in sub-command isn't handled by guestfish in remote control mode
 - 576879 libguestfs protocol loses synchronization if you 'upload' before mounting disks
 - 559963 libguestfs Perl programs do set locale, but still localization doesn't work
 - 521674 Perl modules are unversioned, but should carry version numbers
 - 516096 Race condition in test_swapon_label_0: /sbin/blockdev: BLKRRPART: Device or resource busy
 - 507810 guestfish -i / virt-inspector cannot handle spaces in filenames
 - 502533 Updated Polish translation of libguestfs
 - 501894 Some String parameters should be OptString
 - 501893 String parameters should be checked for != NULL
 - 501889 write-file does not support strings containing ASCII NUL
 - 484986 grub-install fails on virtio disk

Release notes for previous versions of libguestfs
-------------------------------------------------

2009-11-10 : 1.0.78
https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2009-November/msg00095.html

2009-09-13 : 1.0.67
https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2009-August/msg00281.html

2009-07-23 : 1.0.64
https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2009-July/msg00059.html

2009-07-14 : 1.0.59
https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2009-July/msg00023.html