+TODO list for libguestfs
+======================================================================
+
+This list contains random ideas and musings on features we could add
+to libguestfs in future.
+
+ - RWMJ
+
+Python bindings
+---------------
+
Ideas for the Python bindings:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-virt/2009-April/msg00114.html
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+FTP server or FUSE?
+-------------------
+
+Originally we had intended to implement an NFS server inside the
+appliance, which would allow the guest filesystems to be mounted on
+the host, and large changes to be made. We eventually rejected the
+idea of using NFS, partly because it requires root to mount
+filesystems in the host, and partly because of problems handling UID
+mappings between host and guest filesystem.
+
+Then we look at implementing an FTP server instead. FTP clients are
+widely available for many languages, don't require root, and don't
+have any UID mapping problems. However there is the problem of
+getting the TCP connection into the guest, and that FTP requires a
+secondary data connection either in or out of the guest (the NFS
+situation is even more dire).
+
+Thirdly we looked at implementing a FUSE-based filesystem. This is
+plausible - it could be implemented just by adding the additional FUSE
+operations to the standard guestfs(3) API, and then implementing a
+simple FUSE daemon. (The FUSE website has some very helpful
+documentation and examples). I [RWMJ] am not particularly convinced
+that a FUSE-based filesystem would really be useful to anyone, but am
+prepared to accept patches if someone does all the work.
+
+See also the mountlo project:
+http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=121684&package_id=150116
+
+BufferIn
+--------
+
+BufferIn should turn into <char *, int> and simple strings in other
+languages that can handle 8 bit clean strings.
+
+Limit on transfers would still be 2MB for these types.
+ - then implement write-file properly
+
+febootstrap / debootstrap inside appliance
+------------------------------------------
+
+This was originally proposed as a way to install new operating systems
+in the appliance. However no one has come up with a workable
+solution.
+
+Haskell bindings
+----------------
+
+Complete the Haskell bindings (see discussion on haskell-cafe).
+
+Complete bind tests
+-------------------
+
+Complete the bind tests - must test the return values and error cases.
+
+virt-inspector - make libvirt XML
+---------------------------------
+
+It should be possible to generate libvirt XML from virt-inspector
+data, at least partially. This would be just another output type so:
+
+ virt-inspector --libvirt guest.img
+
+Note that recent versions of libvirt/virt-install allow guests to be
+imported, so this is not so useful any more.
+
+"Standalone/local mode"
+-----------------------
+
+Instead of running guestfsd (the daemon) inside qemu, there should be
+an option to just run guestfsd directly.
+
+The architecture in this mode would look like:
+
+ +------------------+
+ | main program |
+ |------------------|
+ | libguestfs |
+ +--------^---------+
+ | | reply
+ cmd | |
+ +----v-------------+
+ | guestfsd |
+ +------------------+
+
+Notes:
+
+(1) This only makes sense if we are running as root.
+
+(2) There is no console / kernel messages in this configuration, but
+we might consider capturing stderr from the daemon.
+
+(3) guestfs_config and guestfs_add_drive become no-ops.
+
+Obviously in this configuration, commands are run directly on the
+local machine's disks. You could just run the commands themselves
+directly, but libguestfs provides a convenient API and language
+bindings. Also deals with tricky stuff like parsing the output of the
+LVM commands. Also we get to leverage other code such as
+virt-inspector.
+
+This is mainly useful from live CDs, ie. virt-p2v.
+
+Should we bother having the daemon at all and just link the guestfsd
+code directly into libguestfs?
+
+PPC problems
+------------
+
+[This section should be filed as bugs, but no one seems to care for
+PPC hosts and the hardware is rapidly becoming obsolete]
+
+ ppc (32 bit) works with qemu from git, however there is no serial console
+
+ ppc64 requires extra parameters:
+ -M mac99 -cpu ppc64
+ however it still fails:
+ invalid/unsupported opcode: 01 - 01 - 1a (06301e83) 00000000018c2738 1
+ invalid bits: 00400000 for opcode: 0b - 19 - 15 (2d746572) 0000000000009230
+
+ no serial console in ppc or ppc64 because no one can tell us what
+ console=ttyXX option to use
+
+Supermin appliance to febootstrap
+---------------------------------
+
+Supermin appliance functionality should be moved into febootstrap.
+
+Ideas for extra commands
+------------------------
+
+ General glibc / core programs:
+ chgrp
+ grep (do it locally using pipe?)
+ dd (?)
+ ln / ln -s
+ readlink
+ utime / utimes / futimes / futimens / l..
+ more mk*temp calls
+ some sort of alloc/fallocate/posix_fallocate call to create empty space
+ realpath
+ trunc[ate??]
+
+ ext2 properties:
+ chattr
+ lsattr
+ badblocks
+ blkid
+ debugfs
+ dumpe2fs
+ e2image
+ e2undo
+ filefrag
+ findfs
+ logsave
+ mklost+found
+
+ SELinux:
+ chcat
+ restorecon
+ ch???
+
+ Oddball:
+ pivot_root
+ fts(3) / ftw(3)
+
+Swap space
+----------
+
+Allow swap space from the guest to be used. Is it a good idea?
+
+Query guest architecture
+------------------------
+
+Need a way to query a binary or library file for its architecture.
+Using objdump or readelf?
+What about non-ELF files (eg. Windows, BSD).
+
+To do this properly requires some serious logic, eg. to cover Linux
+and Windows we'd need objdump and i686-pc-mingw32-objdump, and more to
+cover a.out, COFF and 64 bit Windows. Therefore this cannot be done
+inside the daemon, and should be done by a separate, external program
+similar to virt-inspector.
+
+Probably we should go all the way and have virt-inspector able to
+determine kernel and userspace architectures of guests.
+
+Other initrd-* commands
+-----------------------
+
+Such as:
+
+initrd-extract
+initrd-replace
+
+Simple editing of configuration files
+-------------------------------------
+
+Some easy non-Augeas methods to edit configuration files.
+I'm thinking:
+
+ replace /etc/file key value
+
+which would look in /etc/file for any instances of
+
+ key=...
+ key ...
+ key:...
+
+and replace them with
+
+ key=value
+ key value
+ key:value
+
+That would solve about 50% of reconfiguration needs, and for the
+rest you'd use Augeas, 'download'+'upload' or 'edit'.
+
+RWMJ: I had a go at implementing this, but it's quite error-prone to
+do this sort of editing inside the C-based daemon code. It's far
+better to do it with Augeas, or else to use an external language like
+Perl.
+
+Quick Perl scripts
+------------------
+
+Currently we can't do Perl "one-liners". ie. The current syntax for
+any short Perl one-liner would be:
+
+ perl -MSys::Guestfs -e '$g = Sys::Guestfs->new(); $g->add_drive ("foo"); $g->launch; $g->wait_ready; $g->mount ("/dev/sda1", "/"); ....'
+
+You can see we're well beyond a single line just getting to the point
+of adding drives and mounting.
+
+First suggestion:
+
+ $h = create ($filename, \"/dev/sda1\" => \"/\");
+
+ $h = create ([$file1, $file2], \"/dev/sda1\" => \"/\");
+
+To mount read-only, add C<ro =E<gt> 1> like this:
+
+ $h = create ($filename, \"/dev/sda1\" => \"/\", ro => 1);
+
+which is equivalent to the following sequence of calls:
+
+ $h = Sys::Guestfs->new ();
+ $h->set_autosync (1);
+ $h->add_drive_ro ($filename);
+ $h->launch ();
+ $h->wait_ready ();
+ $h->mount_ro (\"/dev/sda1\", \"/\");
-We badly need to actually implement the FTP server mentioned in the
-documentation.
+Command-line form would be:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+ perl -MSys::Guestfs=:all -e '$_=create("guest.img", "/dev/sda1" => "/"); $_->cat ("/etc/fstab");'
-Needs pkgconfig file.
+That's not brief enough for one-liners, so we could have an extra
+autogenerated module which creates a Sys::Guestfs handle singleton
+(the handle is an implicit global variable as in guestfish), eg:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+ perl -MSys::Guestfs::One -e 'inspect("guest.img"); cat ("/etc/fstab");'
-Detect and enable -kvm and -no-kqemu flags.
-Also allow the qemu binary to be configured.
+How would editing files work?
git.annexia.org / libguestfs.git / blobdiff