Libguestfs is tools and a library for accessing and modifying guest disk images. For more information see the home page: http://libguestfs.org/ For discussion, development, patches, etc. please use the mailing list: http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/libguestfs Requirements ---------------------------------------------------------------------- - recent QEMU >= 0.13 with virtio-serial support - kernel >= 2.6.34 with virtio-serial support enabled. virtio-block support is not required but comes highly recommended. - febootstrap >= 3.0 (recommended >= 3.3) *NB*: febootstrap 2.x WILL NOT WORK febootstrap 3.x is distro-independent, and is required on Debian and other distros too - XDR, rpcgen (on Linux these are provided by glibc) - pcre (Perl Compatible Regular Expressions C library) (optional) - libmagic (the library that corresponds to the 'file' command) (optional) - libvirt (optional) - libxml2 (optional) - libconfig (optional, to parse /etc/libguestfs-tools.conf) - Augeas (http://augeas.net/) (optional) - gperf - squashfs-tools (mksquashfs only) - genisoimage (NOT mkisofs any more) - 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) - (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) 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 - (Optional) OCaml PCRE bindings (ocaml-pcre). - (Optional) Perl if you want to build the perl bindings - (Optional) Python if you want to build the python bindings - (Optional) Ruby, rake if you want to build the ruby bindings - (Optional) Java, JNI, jpackage-utils if you want to build the java bindings - (Optional) GHC if you want to build the Haskell bindings - (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. - po4a for translating manpages and POD files. This is optional when compiling from the tarball, but mandatory if you compile from git. - (Optional) PHP, phpize if you want to build the PHP bindings - (Optional, but highly recommended) getfacl, getfattr Running ./configure will check you have all the requirements installed on your machine. Building ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Then make the daemon, library and root filesystem: ./configure make Finally run the tests: make check If everything works, you can install the library and tools by running this command as root: make install You can run guestfish, guestmount and the virt tools without needing to install, using the "run" script in the top directory. This script sets up some environment variables. For example: ./run ./fish/guestfish [usual guestfish args ...] ./run ./inspector/virt-inspector [usual virt-inspector args ...] If you are already in the fish/ subdirectory, then the following command will also work: ../run ./guestfish [...] You can also make a symlink (note: NOT a hard link) from your $PATH to the run script, eg: cd ~/bin ln -s ~/libguestfs/run libguestfs-run cd ~/libguestfs libguestfs-run ./inspector/virt-inspector [...] You can also run the C programs under valgrind like this: ./run valgrind [valgrind opts...] ./cat/virt-cat [virt-cat opts...] This also works with sudo (eg. if you need root access for libvirt or to access a block device): sudo ./run ./cat/virt-cat -d LinuxGuest /etc/passwd qemu ---------------------------------------------------------------------- By far the most common problem is with broken or incompatible qemu releases. 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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: http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/FAQ#How_can_I_use_kvm_with_a_non-privileged_user.3F On some systems, this will work too: chmod o+rw /dev/kvm On some systems, the chmod will not survive a reboot, and you will need to make edits to the udev configuration. vmchannel ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. In libguestfs <= 1.0.71, we required a specific vmchannel which is properly known as "guestfwd" and has been upstream in qemu since here: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2009-02/msg01042.html 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. In libguestfs >= 1.5.4 we switched again to using qemu's virtio-serial and removed all the other vmchannels and the SLIRP channel. Supermin appliance ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- On my machines I can usually rebuild the appliance in around 3 minutes. If it takes much longer for you, use a local distro mirror or squid. 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, choose a Fedora mirror which is close to you, set this with './configure --with-mirror=[...]', and then proxy the whole lot through squid by setting http_proxy environment variable). 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 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 port the febootstrap first (http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/febootstrap/). Copyright and license information ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright (C) 2009-2011 Red Hat Inc. The library is distributed under the LGPLv2+. The programs are distributed under the GPLv2+. Please see the files COPYING and COPYING.LIB for full license information.