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.
+Java, PHP, Erlang, Haskell or C#). You can also use it from shell
+scripts or the command line.
You don't need to be root to use libguestfs, although obviously you do
need enough permissions to access the disk images.
* disk image.
*/
guestfs_touch (g, "/hello");
-
+
/* This is only needed for libguestfs < 1.5.24. Since then
* it is done automatically when you close the handle. See
* discussion of autosync in this page.
guestfs_download (g, filename, "/dev/stdout");
-and you can write tar output to a pipe C<fd> by doing:
+and you can write tar output to a file descriptor C<fd> by doing:
char devfd[64];
snprintf (devfd, sizeof devfd, "/dev/fd/%d", fd);
C<c:\windows\system32>. When the filesystem is mounted in libguestfs,
that directory might be referred to as C</WINDOWS/System32>.
-Drive letter mappings are outside the scope of libguestfs. You have
-to use libguestfs to read the appropriate Windows Registry and
-configuration files, to determine yourself how drives are mapped (see
-also L<hivex(3)> and L<virt-inspector(1)>).
+Drive letter mappings can be found using inspection
+(see L</INSPECTION> and L</guestfs_inspect_get_drive_mappings>)
-Replacing backslash characters with forward slash characters is also
-outside the scope of libguestfs, but something that you can easily do.
+Dealing with separator characters (backslash vs forward slash) is
+outside the scope of libguestfs, but usually a simple character
+replacement will work.
-Where we can help is in resolving the case insensitivity of paths.
-For this, call L</guestfs_case_sensitive_path>.
+To resolve the case insensitivity of paths, call
+L</guestfs_case_sensitive_path>.
=head3 ACCESSING THE WINDOWS REGISTRY
The C# bindings are highly experimental. Please read the warnings
at the top of C<csharp/Libguestfs.cs>.
+=item B<Erlang>
+
+See L<guestfs-erlang(3)>.
+
=item B<Haskell>
This is the only language binding that is working but incomplete.
=item B<Java>
Full documentation is contained in the Javadoc which is distributed
-with libguestfs.
+with libguestfs. For examples, see L<guestfs-java(3)>.
=item B<OCaml>
=item Autosync / forgetting to sync.
+I<Update:> Autosync is enabled by default for all API users starting
+from libguestfs 1.5.24. This section only applies to older versions.
+
When modifying a filesystem from C or another language, you B<must>
unmount all filesystems and call L</guestfs_sync> explicitly before
you close the libguestfs handle. You can also call:
dirty guestfish scripts that forget to sync will work just fine, which
can make this very puzzling if you are trying to debug a problem.
-Update: Autosync is enabled by default for all API users starting from
-libguestfs 1.5.24.
-
=item Mount option C<-o sync> should not be the default.
+I<Update:> L</guestfs_mount> no longer adds any options starting
+from libguestfs 1.13.16. This section only applies to older versions.
+
If you use L</guestfs_mount>, then C<-o sync,noatime> are added
implicitly. However C<-o sync> does not add any reliability benefit,
but does have a very large performance impact.
=back
-=head2 PROTOCOL LIMITS
-
-Internally libguestfs uses a message-based protocol to pass API calls
-and their responses to and from a small "appliance" (see L</INTERNALS>
-for plenty more detail about this). The maximum message size used by
-the protocol is slightly less than 4 MB. For some API calls you may
-need to be aware of this limit. The API calls which may be affected
-are individually documented, with a link back to this section of the
-documentation.
-
-A simple call such as L</guestfs_cat> returns its result (the file
-data) in a simple string. Because this string is at some point
-internally encoded as a message, the maximum size that it can return
-is slightly under 4 MB. If the requested file is larger than this
-then you will get an error.
-
-In order to transfer large files into and out of the guest filesystem,
-you need to use particular calls that support this. The sections
-L</UPLOADING> and L</DOWNLOADING> document how to do this.
-
-You might also consider mounting the disk image using our FUSE
-filesystem support (L<guestmount(1)>).
-
=head2 KEYS AND PASSPHRASES
Certain libguestfs calls take a parameter that contains sensitive key
=head2 PATH
-Libguestfs needs a kernel and initrd.img, which it finds by looking
-along an internal path.
+Libguestfs needs a supermin appliance, which it finds by looking along
+an internal path.
By default it looks for these in the directory C<$libdir/guestfs>
(eg. C</usr/local/lib/guestfs> or C</usr/lib64/guestfs>).
Note that libguestfs also calls qemu with the -help and -version
options in order to determine features.
+Wrappers can also be used to edit the options passed to qemu. In the
+following example, the C<-machine ...> option (C<-machine> and the
+following argument) are removed from the command line and replaced
+with C<-machine pc,accel=tcg>. The while loop iterates over the
+options until it finds the right one to remove, putting the remaining
+options into the C<args> array.
+
+ #!/bin/bash -
+
+ i=0
+ while [ $# -gt 0 ]; do
+ case "$1" in
+ -machine)
+ shift 2;;
+ *)
+ args[i]="$1"
+ (( i++ ))
+ shift ;;
+ esac
+ done
+
+ exec qemu-kvm -machine pc,accel=tcg "${args[@]}"
+
=head2 ATTACHING TO RUNNING DAEMONS
I<Note (1):> This is B<highly experimental> and has a tendency to eat
to free the handle and release all resources used.
For information on using multiple handles and threads, see the section
-L</MULTIPLE HANDLES AND MULTIPLE THREADS> below.
+L</MULTIPLE HANDLES AND MULTIPLE THREADS> above.
=head2 guestfs_create
Create a connection handle.
-You have to call L</guestfs_add_drive_opts> (or one of the equivalent
-calls) on the handle at least once.
+On success this returns a non-NULL pointer to a handle. On error it
+returns NULL.
-This function returns a non-NULL pointer to a handle on success or
-NULL on error.
+You have to "configure" the handle after creating it. This includes
+calling L</guestfs_add_drive_opts> (or one of the equivalent calls) on
+the handle at least once.
After configuring the handle, you have to call L</guestfs_launch>.
-You may also want to configure error handling for the handle. See
+You may also want to configure error handling for the handle. See the
L</ERROR HANDLING> section below.
=head2 guestfs_close
This closes the connection handle and frees up all resources used.
+If autosync was set on the handle and the handle was launched, then
+this implicitly calls various functions to unmount filesystems and
+sync the disk. See L</guestfs_set_autosync> for more details.
+
+If a close callback was set on the handle, then it is called.
+
=head1 ERROR HANDLING
API functions can return errors. For example, almost all functions
For other programs the caller will almost certainly want to install an
alternate error handler or do error handling in-line like this:
- g = guestfs_create ();
-
/* This disables the default behaviour of printing errors
on stderr. */
guestfs_set_error_handler (g, NULL, NULL);
/* Examine the error message and print it etc. */
char *msg = guestfs_last_error (g);
int errnum = guestfs_last_errno (g);
- fprintf (stderr, "%s\n", msg);
+ fprintf (stderr, "%s", msg);
+ if (errnum != 0)
+ fprintf (stderr, ": %s", strerror (errnum));
+ fprintf (stderr, "\n");
/* ... */
- }
+ }
Out of memory errors are handled differently. The default action is
to call L<abort(3)>. If this is undesirable, then you can set a
=head2 guestfs_set_out_of_memory_handler
typedef void (*guestfs_abort_cb) (void);
- int guestfs_set_out_of_memory_handler (guestfs_h *g,
- guestfs_abort_cb);
+ void guestfs_set_out_of_memory_handler (guestfs_h *g,
+ guestfs_abort_cb);
The callback C<cb> will be called if there is an out of memory
situation. I<Note this callback must not return>.
C<guestfs_set_subprocess_quit_callback>,
C<guestfs_set_launch_done_callback>, C<guestfs_set_close_callback> and
C<guestfs_set_progress_callback> are no longer documented in this
-manual page.
+manual page. Because of the ABI guarantee, the old functions continue
+to work.
Handles generate events when certain things happen, such as log
messages being generated, progress messages during long-running
=item *
If any progress notification is sent during a call, then a final
-progress notification is always sent when C<position> = C<total>.
+progress notification is always sent when C<position> = C<total>
+(I<unless> the call fails with an error).
This is to simplify caller code, so callers can easily set the
progress indicator to "100%" at the end of the operation, without
requiring special code to detect this case.
+=item *
+
+For some calls we are unable to estimate the progress of the call, but
+we can still generate progress messages to indicate activity. This is
+known as "pulse mode", and is directly supported by certain progress
+bar implementations (eg. GtkProgressBar).
+
+For these calls, zero or more progress messages are generated with
+C<position = 0> and C<total = 1>, followed by a final message with
+C<position = total = 1>.
+
+As noted above, if the call fails with an error then the final message
+may not be generated.
+
=back
The callback also receives the procedure number (C<proc_nr>) and
can override the printing of trace messages to stderr by setting up a
callback.
+=item GUESTFS_EVENT_ENTER
+(payload type: function name)
+
+The callback function is called whenever a libguestfs function
+is entered.
+
+The payload is a string which contains the name of the function
+that we are entering (not including C<guestfs_> prefix).
+
+Note that libguestfs functions can call themselves, so you may
+see many events from a single call. A few libguestfs functions
+do not generate this event.
+
+If no callback is registered: the event is ignored.
+
=back
=head3 guestfs_set_event_callback
syslog (priority, "event 0x%lx: %s", event, buf);
}
+=head1 CANCELLING LONG TRANSFERS
+
+Some operations can be cancelled by the caller while they are in
+progress. Currently only operations that involve uploading or
+downloading data can be cancelled (technically: operations that have
+C<FileIn> or C<FileOut> parameters in the generator).
+
+=head2 guestfs_user_cancel
+
+ void guestfs_user_cancel (guestfs_h *g);
+
+C<guestfs_user_cancel> cancels the current upload or download
+operation.
+
+Unlike most other libguestfs calls, this function is signal safe and
+thread safe. You can call it from a signal handler or from another
+thread, without needing to do any locking.
+
+The transfer that was in progress (if there is one) will stop shortly
+afterwards, and will return an error. The errno (see
+L</guestfs_last_errno>) is set to C<EINTR>, so you can test for this
+to find out if the operation was cancelled or failed because of
+another error.
+
+No cleanup is performed: for example, if a file was being uploaded
+then after cancellation there may be a partially uploaded file. It is
+the caller's responsibility to clean up if necessary.
+
+There are two common places that you might call C<guestfs_user_cancel>.
+
+In an interactive text-based program, you might call it from a
+C<SIGINT> signal handler so that pressing C<^C> cancels the current
+operation. (You also need to call L</guestfs_set_pgroup> so that
+child processes don't receive the C<^C> signal).
+
+In a graphical program, when the main thread is displaying a progress
+bar with a cancel button, wire up the cancel button to call this
+function.
+
=head1 PRIVATE DATA AREA
You can attach named pieces of private data to the libguestfs handle,
C<key> is the name to associate with this data, and C<data> is an
arbitrary pointer (which can be C<NULL>). Any previous item with the
-same name is overwritten.
+same key is overwritten.
-You can use any C<key> you want, but names beginning with an
-underscore character are reserved for internal libguestfs purposes
-(for implementing language bindings). It is recommended to prefix the
-name with some unique string to avoid collisions with other users.
+You can use any C<key> you want, but your key should I<not> start with
+an underscore character. Keys beginning with an underscore character
+are reserved for internal libguestfs purposes (eg. for implementing
+language bindings). It is recommended that you prefix the key with
+some unique string to avoid collisions with other users.
To retrieve the pointer, use:
=head1 INTERNALS
+=head2 APPLIANCE BOOT PROCESS
+
+This process has evolved and continues to evolve. The description
+here corresponds only to the current version of libguestfs and is
+provided for information only.
+
+In order to follow the stages involved below, enable libguestfs
+debugging (set the environment variable C<LIBGUESTFS_DEBUG=1>).
+
+=over 4
+
+=item Create the appliance
+
+C<febootstrap-supermin-helper> is invoked to create the kernel, a
+small initrd and the appliance.
+
+The appliance is cached in C</var/tmp/.guestfs-E<lt>UIDE<gt>> (or in
+another directory if C<TMPDIR> is set).
+
+For a complete description of how the appliance is created and cached,
+read the L<febootstrap(8)> and L<febootstrap-supermin-helper(8)> man
+pages.
+
+=item Start qemu and boot the kernel
+
+qemu is invoked to boot the kernel.
+
+=item Run the initrd
+
+C<febootstrap-supermin-helper> builds a small initrd. The initrd is
+not the appliance. The purpose of the initrd is to load enough kernel
+modules in order that the appliance itself can be mounted and started.
+
+The initrd is a cpio archive called
+C</var/tmp/.guestfs-E<lt>UIDE<gt>/initrd>.
+
+When the initrd has started you will see messages showing that kernel
+modules are being loaded, similar to this:
+
+ febootstrap: ext2 mini initrd starting up
+ febootstrap: mounting /sys
+ febootstrap: internal insmod libcrc32c.ko
+ febootstrap: internal insmod crc32c-intel.ko
+
+=item Find and mount the appliance device
+
+The appliance is a sparse file containing an ext2 filesystem which
+contains a familiar (although reduced in size) Linux operating system.
+It would normally be called C</var/tmp/.guestfs-E<lt>UIDE<gt>/root>.
+
+The regular disks being inspected by libguestfs are the first
+devices exposed by qemu (eg. as C</dev/vda>).
+
+The last disk added to qemu is the appliance itself (eg. C</dev/vdb>
+if there was only one regular disk).
+
+Thus the final job of the initrd is to locate the appliance disk,
+mount it, and switch root into the appliance, and run C</init> from
+the appliance.
+
+If this works successfully you will see messages such as:
+
+ febootstrap: picked /sys/block/vdb/dev as root device
+ febootstrap: creating /dev/root as block special 252:16
+ febootstrap: mounting new root on /root
+ febootstrap: chroot
+ Starting /init script ...
+
+Note that C<Starting /init script ...> indicates that the appliance's
+init script is now running.
+
+=item Initialize the appliance
+
+The appliance itself now initializes itself. This involves starting
+certain processes like C<udev>, possibly printing some debug
+information, and finally running the daemon (C<guestfsd>).
+
+=item The daemon
+
+Finally the daemon (C<guestfsd>) runs inside the appliance. If it
+runs you should see:
+
+ verbose daemon enabled
+
+The daemon expects to see a named virtio-serial port exposed by qemu
+and connected on the other end to the library.
+
+The daemon connects to this port (and hence to the library) and sends
+a four byte message C<GUESTFS_LAUNCH_FLAG>, which initiates the
+communication protocol (see below).
+
+=back
+
=head2 COMMUNICATION PROTOCOL
Don't rely on using this protocol directly. This section documents
=over 4
+=item C<align>
+
+L<virt-alignment-scan(1)> command and documentation.
+
=item C<appliance>
The libguestfs appliance, build scripts and so on.
The L<virt-cat(1)>, L<virt-filesystems(1)> and L<virt-ls(1)> commands
and documentation.
+=item C<caution>
+
+Safety and liveness tests of components that libguestfs depends upon
+(not of libguestfs itself). Mainly this is for qemu and the kernel.
+
=item C<contrib>
Outside contributions, experimental parts.
L<virt-df(1)> command and documentation.
+=item C<edit>
+
+L<virt-edit(1)> command and documentation.
+
=item C<examples>
C API example code.
L<virt-rescue(1)> command and documentation.
+=item C<resize>
+
+L<virt-resize(1)> command and documentation.
+
+=item C<sparsify>
+
+L<virt-sparsify(1)> command and documentation.
+
=item C<src>
Source code to the C library.
=item C<tools>
-Command line tools written in Perl (L<virt-resize(1)> and many others).
+Command line tools written in Perl (L<virt-win-reg(1)> and many others).
=item C<test-tool>
=item C<csharp>
+=item C<erlang>
+
=item C<haskell>
=item C<java>
=back
+=head2 MAKING A STABLE RELEASE
+
+When we make a stable release, there are several steps documented
+here. See L</LIBGUESTFS VERSION NUMBERS> for general information
+about the stable branch policy.
+
+=over 4
+
+=item *
+
+Check C<make && make check> works on at least Fedora, Debian and
+Ubuntu.
+
+=item *
+
+Finalize RELEASE-NOTES.
+
+=item *
+
+Update ROADMAP.
+
+=item *
+
+Run C<src/api-support/update-from-tarballs.sh>.
+
+=item *
+
+Push and pull from Transifex.
+
+Run:
+
+ tx push -s
+
+to push the latest POT files to Transifex. Then run:
+
+ ./tx-pull.sh
+
+which is a wrapper to pull the latest translated C<*.po> files.
+
+=item *
+
+Create new stable and development directories under
+L<http://libguestfs.org/download>.
+
+=item *
+
+Create the branch in git:
+
+ git tag -a 1.XX.0 -m "Version 1.XX.0 (stable)"
+ git tag -a 1.YY.0 -m "Version 1.YY.0 (development)"
+ git branch stable-1.XX
+ git push origin tag 1.XX.0 1.YY.0 stable-1.XX
+
+=back
+
+=head1 LIMITS
+
+=head2 PROTOCOL LIMITS
+
+Internally libguestfs uses a message-based protocol to pass API calls
+and their responses to and from a small "appliance" (see L</INTERNALS>
+for plenty more detail about this). The maximum message size used by
+the protocol is slightly less than 4 MB. For some API calls you may
+need to be aware of this limit. The API calls which may be affected
+are individually documented, with a link back to this section of the
+documentation.
+
+A simple call such as L</guestfs_cat> returns its result (the file
+data) in a simple string. Because this string is at some point
+internally encoded as a message, the maximum size that it can return
+is slightly under 4 MB. If the requested file is larger than this
+then you will get an error.
+
+In order to transfer large files into and out of the guest filesystem,
+you need to use particular calls that support this. The sections
+L</UPLOADING> and L</DOWNLOADING> document how to do this.
+
+You might also consider mounting the disk image using our FUSE
+filesystem support (L<guestmount(1)>).
+
+=head2 MAXIMUM NUMBER OF DISKS
+
+When using virtio disks (the default) the current limit is B<25>
+disks.
+
+Virtio itself consumes 1 virtual PCI slot per disk, and PCI is limited
+to 31 slots. However febootstrap only understands disks with names
+C</dev/vda> through C</dev/vdz> (26 letters) and it reserves one disk
+for its own purposes.
+
+We are working to substantially raise this limit in future versions
+but it requires complex changes to qemu.
+
+In future versions of libguestfs it should also be possible to "hot
+plug" disks (add and remove disks after calling L</guestfs_launch>).
+This also requires changes to qemu.
+
+=head2 MAXIMUM NUMBER OF PARTITIONS PER DISK
+
+Virtio limits the maximum number of partitions per disk to B<15>.
+
+This is because it reserves 4 bits for the minor device number (thus
+C</dev/vda>, and C</dev/vda1> through C</dev/vda15>).
+
+If you attach a disk with more than 15 partitions, the extra
+partitions are ignored by libguestfs.
+
+=head2 MAXIMUM SIZE OF A DISK
+
+Probably the limit is between 2**63-1 and 2**64-1 bytes.
+
+We have tested block devices up to 1 exabyte (2**60 or
+1,152,921,504,606,846,976 bytes) using sparse files backed by an XFS
+host filesystem.
+
+Although libguestfs probably does not impose any limit, the underlying
+host storage will. If you store disk images on a host ext4
+filesystem, then the maximum size will be limited by the maximum ext4
+file size (currently 16 TB). If you store disk images as host logical
+volumes then you are limited by the maximum size of an LV.
+
+For the hugest disk image files, we recommend using XFS on the host
+for storage.
+
+=head2 MAXIMUM SIZE OF A PARTITION
+
+The MBR (ie. classic MS-DOS) partitioning scheme uses 32 bit sector
+numbers. Assuming a 512 byte sector size, this means that MBR cannot
+address a partition located beyond 2 TB on the disk.
+
+It is recommended that you use GPT partitions on disks which are
+larger than this size. GPT uses 64 bit sector numbers and so can
+address partitions which are theoretically larger than the largest
+disk we could support.
+
+=head2 MAXIMUM SIZE OF A FILESYSTEM, FILES, DIRECTORIES
+
+This depends on the filesystem type. libguestfs itself does not
+impose any known limit. Consult Wikipedia or the filesystem
+documentation to find out what these limits are.
+
+=head2 MAXIMUM UPLOAD AND DOWNLOAD
+
+The API functions L</guestfs_upload>, L</guestfs_download>,
+L</guestfs_tar_in>, L</guestfs_tar_out> and the like allow unlimited
+sized uploads and downloads.
+
+=head2 INSPECTION LIMITS
+
+The inspection code has several arbitrary limits on things like the
+size of Windows Registry hive it will read, and the length of product
+name. These are intended to stop a malicious guest from consuming
+arbitrary amounts of memory and disk space on the host, and should not
+be reached in practice. See the source code for more information.
+
=head1 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
=over 4
+=item FEBOOTSTRAP_KERNEL
+
+=item FEBOOTSTRAP_MODULES
+
+These two environment variables allow the kernel that libguestfs uses
+in the appliance to be selected. If C<$FEBOOTSTRAP_KERNEL> is not
+set, then the most recent host kernel is chosen. For more information
+about kernel selection, see L<febootstrap-supermin-helper(8)>. This
+feature is only available in febootstrap E<ge> 3.8.
+
=item LIBGUESTFS_APPEND
Pass additional options to the guest kernel.
=item LIBGUESTFS_PATH
-Set the path that libguestfs uses to search for kernel and initrd.img.
-See the discussion of paths in section PATH above.
+Set the path that libguestfs uses to search for a supermin appliance.
+See the discussion of paths in section L</PATH> above.
=item LIBGUESTFS_QEMU
=head1 SEE ALSO
L<guestfs-examples(3)>,
+L<guestfs-erlang(3)>,
+L<guestfs-java(3)>,
L<guestfs-ocaml(3)>,
+L<guestfs-perl(3)>,
L<guestfs-python(3)>,
L<guestfs-ruby(3)>,
L<guestfish(1)>,
L<guestmount(1)>,
+L<virt-alignment-scan(1)>,
L<virt-cat(1)>,
L<virt-copy-in(1)>,
L<virt-copy-out(1)>,
L<virt-ls(1)>,
L<virt-make-fs(1)>,
L<virt-rescue(1)>,
+L<virt-resize(1)>,
+L<virt-sparsify(1)>,
L<virt-tar(1)>,
L<virt-tar-in(1)>,
L<virt-tar-out(1)>,
L<virt-win-reg(1)>,
L<qemu(1)>,
L<febootstrap(1)>,
+L<febootstrap-supermin-helper(8)>,
L<hivex(3)>,
L<http://libguestfs.org/>.
=head1 COPYRIGHT
-Copyright (C) 2009-2010 Red Hat Inc.
+Copyright (C) 2009-2011 Red Hat Inc.
L<http://libguestfs.org/>
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
git.annexia.org / libguestfs.git / blobdiff