extra details about the guest itself in order to get to its
UID->username map (eg. /etc/passwd from the guest).
-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).
+PHP bindings
+------------
+
+Add bindtests to PHP bindings.
+
Complete bind tests
-------------------
Should we bother having the daemon at all and just link the guestfsd
code directly into libguestfs?
-Supermin appliance to febootstrap
----------------------------------
-
-Supermin appliance functionality should be moved into febootstrap.
-
Ideas for extra commands
------------------------
findfs
logsave
mklost+found
- ext2undelete
SELinux:
chcat
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->mount_ro (\"/dev/sda1\", \"/\");
How would editing files work?
-ntfsclone
----------
-
-Useful imaging tool:
-http://man.linux-ntfs.org/ntfsclone.8.html
-
virt-rescue pty
---------------
Note that pty requires cooperation inside the C code too (there are
two sides to a pty, and one has to be handled after the fork).
+[I tried to implement this in the new C virt-rescue, but it doesn't
+work. qemu is implementing its own ptys, and they are broken. Need
+to fix qemu.]
+
Windows-based daemon/appliance
------------------------------
One would have to download those to the host and launch another
libguestfs instance.
-List, mount filesystems by UUID and label
------------------------------------------
-
-[See related:
-http://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2009-August/msg00031.html]
-
-List filesystems by UUID or label.
-
-Mount filesystems by UUID or label. (I'm not really sure if we can do
-this at the moment but we ought to be able to do it, and perhaps make
-it easier by having a direct command).
+[Not sure this is such a good idea. See also live CD inspection idea below.]
Map filesystems to disk blocks
------------------------------
Is it even possible?
+See also contribs/visualize-alignment/
+
Integration with host intrusion systems
---------------------------------------
http://osiris.shmoo.com/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/tripwire/
--N option should be generated
------------------------------
-
-'-N' option should be generated code, and should generate
-documentation in guestfish(1) manpage.
-
Fix 'file'
----------
https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2010-June/msg00053.html
https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2010-June/msg00079.html
-Regression test on virt-inspector
----------------------------------
-
-Occasionally we break virt-inspector through some change. We should
-add a regression test for it. However this is hard because we'd need
-to avoid having to carry huge images.
-
Freeze/thaw filesystems
-----------------------
Tip: Use 'll /' to view the filesystem or ...
><fs> ll /
-New guestfish commands
-----------------------
-
-'list-filesystems' => list mountable filesystems
-
-We could implement this as a new API call, replacing a number of areas
-of the current code where this is done already (in virt-inspector and
-elsewhere). What we normally do to find out if a partition contains a
-mountable filesystem is to just blindly mount it, and see if that
-succeeds. However the kernel won't let us do this if the filesystem
-is already mounted somewhere, so a naive implementation of this in the
-daemon won't work. We would have to check if the partition was
-already mounted.
-
Could we make guestfish interactive if commands are used without params?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
How can we solve these common user problems?
-- http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/users/2010-June/374931.html
- In guestfish, specified -m non-existent filesystem. We could suggest
- a list of filesystems, or suggest they run the virt-list-filesystems
- command.
-
-Progress of long-running operations
------------------------------------
-
-For example, copying in virt-resize. How can we display the progress
-of these operations? This is a basic usability requirement, and
-frequently requested.
-
-See: https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2010-July/msg00003.html
-and follow-ups.
+[space for common problems here]
Better support for encrypted devices
------------------------------------
groups. If it contains, eg., partitions, you cannot access them.
We would like to add:
- - An easier way to use this from guestfish.
- Direct access to the /dev/mapper device (eg. if it contains
anything apart from VGs).
-Recursive upload / download of multiple files
----------------------------------------------
+Display image as PS
+-------------------
+
+Display the structure of an image file as a PS.
-virt-tar is really clumsy to use, and upload/download in guestfish can
-only do single files. tar-in in guestfish can upload multiple files,
-but only if you have prepared a tarball in advance.
+Greater use of blkid / libblkid
+-------------------------------
-What we really need is a method which is as easy to use as 'scp' and
-'scp -r'.
+guestfs_zero should use wipefs. See wipefs(8).
-Can we add this as a command in guestfish? This will be more useful
-since users will already need to be in guestfish in order to create
-target directories, review what they've done etc. It could be a meta-
-command such as:
+There are various useful functions in libblkid for listing partitions,
+devices etc which we are essentially duplicating in the daemon. It
+would make more sense to just use libblkid for this.
- copy-in-recursive localdir remotedir
- copy-out-recursive remotedir localdir
+There are some places where we call out to the 'blkid' program. This
+might be replaced by direct use of the library (if this is easier).
-which would hide use of tgz-in etc.
+Visualization
+-------------
-Sys::Guestfs::Lib / inspector code in C
----------------------------------------
+Eric Sandeen pointed out the blktrace tool which is a better way of
+capturing traces than using patched qemu (see
+contrib/visualize-alignment). We would still use the same
+visualization tools in conjunction with blktrace traces.
+
+guestfish parsing
+-----------------
+
+At the moment guestfish uses an ad hoc parser which has many
+shortcomings. We should change to using a lex/yacc-based scanner and
+parser (there are better parsers out there, but yacc is sufficient and
+very widely available).
+
+The scanner must deal with the case of parsing a whole command string,
+eg. for a command that the user types in:
+
+ ><fs> add-drive-opts "/tmp/foo" readonly:true
+
+and also with parsing single words from the command line:
+
+ guestfish add-drive-opts /tmp/foo readonly:true
+
+Note the quotes are for scanning and don't indicate types.
-This would allow us to:
+We should also allow variables and expressions as part of this new
+parsing code, eg:
+
+ set roots inspect-os
+ set product inspect-get-product-name %{roots[0]}
+
+% is better than $ because of shell escaping and confusion with shell
+variables.
+
+Can we combine this with ability to set and read environment
+variables? Currently guestfish uses many environment variables like
+$EDITOR without any corresponding ability to set them.
+
+ set EDITOR /usr/bin/emacs
+ echo $EDITOR # or %{EDITOR}
+ edit /etc/resolv.conf
+
+live CD inspection for Windows 7
+--------------------------------
+
+Windows 7 install CDs are quite different and pretty impenetrable.
+There are no obvious files to parse.
+
+More ntfs tools
+---------------
+
+ntfsprogs actually has a lot more useful tools than we currently
+use. Interesting ones are:
+
+ntfslabel: display or change filesystem label (we should unify all
+ set*label APIs into a single set_vfs_label which can deal with any
+ filesystem)
+
+ntfsclone: clone, image, restore, rescue NTFS
+
+ntfsinfo: print various information about NTFS volume and files
+
+ntfs streams: extract alternate streams from NTFS files
+
+ntfsck: checker for NTFS filesystems
+
+Undelete files
+--------------
+
+Two useful tools:
+
+ - ext2undelete
+ - ntfsundelete
+
+More mkfs_opts options
+----------------------
+
+Useful options to offer:
+ - Set label.
+ - Set UUID.
+
+Use /proc/self/mountinfo
+------------------------
+
+This file contains lots of interesting information about
+what is mounted and where. eg:
+
+ 16 21 0:3 / /proc rw,relatime - proc /proc rw
+ 17 21 0:16 / /sys rw,relatime - sysfs /sys rw,seclabel
+ 18 23 0:5 / /dev rw,relatime - devtmpfs udev rw,seclabel,size=1906740k,nr_inodes=476685,mode=755
+ 26 21 253:3 / /home rw,relatime - ext4 /dev/mapper/vg-lv_home rw,seclabel,barrier=1,data=ordered
+
+This could be used instead of current hairy code to parse the output
+of the 'mount' command. We could add new APIs to return kernel mount
+options, type of filesystem at a mountpoint etc.
+
+guestfish drive letters
+-----------------------
+
+There should be an option to mount all Windows drives as separate
+paths, like C: => /c/, D: => /d/ etc.
+
+More inspection features
+------------------------
+
+- last shutdown time
+- DHCP address
+- last time the software was updated
+- last user who logged in
+- lastlog, last, who
+
+Get the guest icon
+------------------
+
+- For Linux guests, use /etc/favicon.png if available, else get it in
+ a distro-specific manner.
+- For Windows guests, parse it out of c:\windows\explorer.exe
+
+Integrate event log parsing more closely
+----------------------------------------
+
+https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2011/04/17/decoding-the-windows-event-log-using-guestfish/
+
+We should at least make sure the tools are packaged up for Fedora. We
+could document formally how to do event log parsing. Also the above
+only works for Windows Vista and later (since the log format changed),
+so we could extend this to work for earlier versions.
+
+Integrate virt-inspector with CMDBs
+-----------------------------------
-- use inspection from other languages
-- get rid of inspector_generator
-- don't use external virt-inspector process in guestfish
+Either integrate virt-inspector with Configuration Management
+Databases (CMDBs) or at least check that virt-inspector produces the
+right range of data so that integration would be possible. The
+standards for CMDBs come from the DMTF, see eg:
-See: https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2010-July/msg00067.html
+http://dmtf.org/news/pr/2009/7/dmtf-releases-cmdbf-standard-federating-configuration-management-data
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