-Libguestfs is a library for accessing and modifying guest disk images.
-Amongst the things this is good for: making batch configuration
-changes to guests, getting disk used/free statistics (see also:
-virt-df), migrating between virtualization systems (see also:
-virt-p2v), performing partial backups, performing partial guest
-clones, cloning guests and changing registry/UUID/hostname info, and
-much else besides.
+Libguestfs is tools and a library for accessing and modifying guest
+disk images. For more information see the home page:
-Libguestfs uses Linux kernel and qemu code, and can access any type of
-guest filesystem that Linux and qemu can, including but not limited
-to: ext2/3/4, btrfs, FAT and NTFS, LVM, many different disk partition
-schemes, qcow, qcow2, vmdk.
+ http://libguestfs.org/
-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.
+For discussion, development, patches, etc. please use the mailing
+list:
-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.
-
-Libguestfs was written by Richard W.M. Jones (rjones@redhat.com).
-For discussion please use the fedora-virt mailing list:
-
- https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-virt
+ http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/libguestfs
Requirements
----------------------------------------------------------------------
-- recent QEMU >= 0.10 with vmchannel support
- http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2009-02/msg01042.html
-
-- febootstrap >= 2.0
+- recent QEMU >= 0.13 with virtio-serial support
-- fakeroot
+- kernel >= 2.6.34 with virtio-serial support enabled. virtio-block
+ and virtio-serial support are not required but highly recommended.
-- fakechroot >= 2.9
+- 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)
+
+- 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
-- (Optional) local Fedora mirror
-
- (Optional) Perl if you want to build the perl bindings
- (Optional) Python if you want to build the python 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
+
Running ./configure will check you have all the requirements installed
on your machine.
Then make the daemon, library and root filesystem:
- ./configure [--with-mirror=URI]
+ ./configure
make
-Use the optional --with-mirror parameter to specify the URI of a local
-Fedora mirror. See the discussion of the MIRROR parameter in the
-febootstrap(8) manpage.
-
Finally run the tests:
make check
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.
+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
need to make edits to the udev configuration.
-Notes on cross-architecture support
+vmchannel
----------------------------------------------------------------------
-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.
+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
-To enable this requires work for cross-architecture and 32-on-64
-support in febootstrap, fakeroot and fakechroot.
+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.
-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 >= 1.5.4 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 Fedora mirror
+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:
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
git.annexia.org / libguestfs.git / blobdiff