From: Richard W.M. Jones <rjones@redhat.com>
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 2009 09:59:51 +0000 (+0100)
Subject: Docs: Add "API Overview" section to guestfs(3) manpage.
X-Git-Tag: 1.0.63~14
X-Git-Url: http://git.annexia.org/?p=libguestfs.git;a=commitdiff_plain;h=8ab8377ef64ec0e2483826388cf7d3c07ffa8ecc

Docs: Add "API Overview" section to guestfs(3) manpage.

This section collects together related API calls, to provide
more coherent documentation about different ways to carry
out actions such as uploading and downloading.
---

diff --git a/guestfs.pod b/guestfs.pod
index c7310a6..2fd88ce 100644
--- a/guestfs.pod
+++ b/guestfs.pod
@@ -203,6 +203,140 @@ directory is I<not> searched unless the path contains an empty element
 or C<.>.  For example C<LIBGUESTFS_PATH=:/usr/lib/guestfs> would
 search the current directory and then C</usr/lib/guestfs>.
 
+=head1 API OVERVIEW
+
+This section provides additional documentation for groups of API
+calls, which may not be obvious from reading about the individual
+calls below.
+
+=head2 LVM2
+
+Libguestfs provides access to a large part of the LVM2 API.  It won't
+make much sense unless you familiarize yourself with the concepts of
+physical volumes, volume groups and logical volumes.
+
+This author strongly recommends reading the LVM HOWTO, online at
+L<http://tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/>.
+
+=head2 PARTITIONING
+
+To create MBR-style (ie. normal PC) partitions use one of the
+C<guestfs_sfdisk*> variants.  These calls use the external
+L<sfdisk(8)> command.
+
+The simplest call is:
+
+ char *lines[] = { ",", NULL };
+ guestfs_sfdiskM (g, "/dev/sda", lines);
+
+This will create a single partition on C</dev/sda> called
+C</dev/sda1> covering the whole disk.
+
+In general MBR partitions are both unnecessarily complicated and
+depend on archaic details, namely the Cylinder-Head-Sector (CHS)
+geometry of the disk.  C<guestfs_sfdiskM> allows you to specify sizes
+in megabytes instead of cylinders, which is a small win.
+C<guestfs_sfdiskM> will choose the nearest cylinder to approximate the
+requested size.  There's a lot of crazy stuff to do with IDE and
+virtio disks having different, incompatible CHS geometries, that you
+probably don't want to know about.  My advice: make a single partition
+to cover the whole disk, then use LVM on top.
+
+In future we aim to provide access to libparted.
+
+=head2 UPLOADING
+
+For small, single files, use C<guestfs_write_file>.  In some versions
+of libguestfs there was a bug which limited this call to text files
+(not containing ASCII NUL characters).
+
+To upload a single file, use C<guestfs_upload>.  This call has no
+limits on file content or size (even files larger than 4 GB).
+
+To upload multiple files, see C<guestfs_tar_in> and C<guestfs_tgz_in>.
+
+However the fastest way to upload I<large numbers of arbitrary files>
+is to turn them into a squashfs or CD ISO (see L<mksquashfs(8)> and
+L<mkisofs(8)>), then attach this using C<guestfs_add_drive_ro>.  If
+you add the drive in a predictable way (eg. adding it last after all
+other drives) then you can get the device name from
+C<guestfs_list_devices> and mount it directly using
+C<guestfs_mount_ro>.  Note that squashfs images are sometimes
+non-portable between kernel versions, and they don't support labels or
+UUIDs.  If you want to pre-build an image or you need to mount it
+using a label or UUID, use an ISO image instead.
+
+=head2 DOWNLOADING
+
+Use C<guestfs_cat> to download small, text only files.  This call
+is limited to files which are less than 2 MB and which cannot contain
+any ASCII NUL (C<\0>) characters.  However it has a very simple
+to use API.
+
+C<guestfs_read_file> can be used to read files which contain
+arbitrary 8 bit data, since it returns a (pointer, size) pair.
+However it is still limited to "small" files, less than 2 MB.
+
+C<guestfs_download> can be used to download any file, with no
+limits on content or size (even files larger than 4 GB).
+
+To download multiple files, see C<guestfs_tar_out> and
+C<guestfs_tgz_out>.
+
+=head2 RUNNING COMMANDS
+
+Although libguestfs is a primarily an API for manipulating files
+inside guest images, we also provide some limited facilities for
+running commands inside guests.
+
+There are many limitations to this:
+
+=over 4
+
+=item *
+
+The kernel version that the command runs under will be different
+from what it expects.
+
+=item *
+
+If the command needs to communicate with daemons, then most likely
+they won't be running.
+
+=item *
+
+The command will be running in limited memory.
+
+=item *
+
+Only supports Linux guests (not Windows, BSD, etc).
+
+=item *
+
+Architecture limitations (eg. won't work for a PPC guest on
+an X86 host).
+
+=back
+
+The two main API calls to run commands are C<guestfs_command> and
+C<guestfs_sh> (there are also variations).
+
+The difference is that C<guestfs_sh> runs commands using the shell, so
+any shell globs, redirections, etc will work.
+
+=head2 LISTING FILES
+
+C<guestfs_ll> is just designed for humans to read (mainly when using
+the L<guestfish(1)>-equivalent command C<ll>).
+
+C<guestfs_ls> is a quick way to get a list of files in a directory
+from programs.
+
+C<guestfs_readdir> is a programmatic way to get a list of files in a
+directory, plus additional information about each one.
+
+C<guestfs_find> can be used to recursively list files.
+
 =head1 HIGH-LEVEL API ACTIONS
 
 =head2 ABI GUARANTEE