-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 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.
-
-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
-FUSE.
-
-Libguestfs is a library that can be linked with C and C++ management
-programs (or management programs written in OCaml, Perl, Python, Ruby,
-Java, PHP, Haskell or C#). You can also use it from shell scripts or the
-command line.
-
-Libguestfs was written by Richard W.M. Jones (rjones@redhat.com) and
-hacked on by lots of other people. For discussion, development,
-patches, etc. please use the mailing list:
-
- http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/libguestfs
+Libguestfs is tools and a library for accessing and modifying guest
+disk images. For more information see the home page:
+ http://libguestfs.org/
-Home page
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+For discussion, development, patches, etc. please use the mailing
+list:
- http://libguestfs.org/
+ http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/libguestfs
Requirements
----------------------------------------------------------------------
-- recent QEMU >= 0.12 with virtio-serial support
+- recent QEMU >= 0.13 with virtio-serial support
-- febootstrap >= 2.9
+- kernel >= 2.6.34 with virtio-serial support enabled. virtio-block
+ and virtio-serial support are not required but highly recommended.
-- fakeroot
-
-- 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)
+- pcre (Perl Compatible Regular Expressions C library) (optional)
+
+- libmagic (the library that corresponds to the 'file' command) (optional)
-- libmagic (the library that corresponds to the 'file' command)
+- libvirt (optional)
-- libvirt
+- libxml2 (optional)
-- libxml2
+- Augeas (http://augeas.net/) (optional)
-- Augeas (http://augeas.net/)
+- gperf
- squashfs-tools (mksquashfs only)
- genisoimage / mkisofs
-- (Optional) hivex >= 1.2.1 to build Windows Registry support
+- 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) to generate the manual pages and
- other documentation.
+- 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 + OCaml library xml-light if you want to rebuild
- the generated files, and also to build the OCaml bindings
- (http://tech.motion-twin.com/xmllight.html)
-
-- (Optional) local Fedora mirror
+- (Optional) OCaml if you want to rebuild the generated files, and
+ also to build the OCaml bindings
- (Optional) Perl if you want to build the perl bindings
- (Optional) GHC if you want to build the Haskell bindings
-- (Optional) Perl XML::XPath, Sys::Virt modules (for libvirt support
-in virt-inspector).
+- (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.
-- (Optional) po4a for translating manpages and POD files.
+- 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
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 is now built as a package in Debian by Guido Gunther and
-the other Debian libvirt maintainers. See:
-
-http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/DebianLibvirtTeam#Packages
-
-You can build for Debian in two different ways, either building a
-Fedora-based appliance using febootstrap, yum, rpm, fakeroot,
-fakechroot (all packaged in Debian). However the recommended way is
-to build a Debian-based appliance using debootstrap and debirf.
-
-Both ways are supported by the configure script.
-
-
qemu
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Supermin appliance
----------------------------------------------------------------------
-If you configure with --enable-supermin then we will build a supermin
-appliance (supermin = super-minimized). This is a very specialized
-appliance which is built on-the-fly at runtime (specifically, when you
-call guestfs_launch).
-
-The normal appliance is a self-contained Linux operating system, based
-on the Fedora/RHEL/CentOS Linux distro. So it contains a complete
-copy of all the libraries and programs needed, like kernel, libc,
-bash, coreutils etc etc.
-
-The supermin appliance removes the kernel and all the executable
-libraries and programs from the appliance. That just leaves a
-skeleton of config files and some data files, which is obviously
-massively smaller than the normal appliance. At runtime we rebuild
-the appliance on-the-fly from the libraries and programs on the host
-(eg. pulling in the real /lib/libc.so, the real /bin/bash etc.)
-
-Although this process of rebuilding the appliance each time sounds
-slow, it turns out to be faster than using the prebuilt appliance.
-(Most of the saving comes from not compressing the appliance - it
-transpires that decompressing the appliance is the slowest part of the
-whole boot sequence). On my machine, a new appliance can be built in
-under a fifth of a second, and the boot time is several seconds
-shorter.
-
-The big advantage of the supermin appliance for distributions like
-Fedora is that it gets security fixes automatically from the host, so
-there is no need to rebuild the whole of libguestfs for a security
-update in some underlying library.
-
-There are several DISADVANTAGES:
-
-It won't work at all except in very narrow, controlled cases like the
-Fedora packaging case. We control the dependencies of the libguestfs
-RPM tightly to ensure that the required binaries are actually present
-on the host.
-
-Furthermore there are certain unlikely changes in the packages on the
-host which could break a supermin appliance, eg. an updated library
-which depends on an additional data file.
-
-Also supermin appliances are subjected to changes in the host kernel
-which might break compatibility with qemu -- these are, of course,
-real bugs in any case.
-
-Lastly, supermin appliances really can't be moved between branches of
-distributions (eg. built on Fedora 12 and moved to Fedora 10) because
-they are not self-contained and they rely on certain libraries being
-around. You shouldn't do this anyway.
-
-Use supermin appliances with caution.
-
-
-Notes on cross-architecture support
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
-
-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 FUSE will work fine, but running commands in guests may
-not be possible.
-
-To enable this requires work for cross-architecture and 32-on-64
-support in febootstrap, fakeroot and fakechroot.
-
-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 >= 1.7.19 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://people.redhat.com/~rjones/febootstrap/
+appliance. You will need to port the febootstrap first
+(http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/febootstrap/).
Copyright and license information
git.annexia.org / libguestfs.git / blobdiff