Release notes for libguestfs 1.8.0
----------------------------------
Updated to commit 0b2a3bd8404a72a3b7e99e330143c26bf42d458a (1.7.16).
These release notes only cover the differences from the previous
stable/dev branch split (1.6.0). For detailed changelogs, please see
the git repository, or the ChangeLog file distributed in the tarball.
New features
- The following tools have been rewritten in C (originally in Perl):
. virt-cat
. virt-df
. virt-inspector
. virt-ls
. virt-rescue
- Some C tools support encrypted guests automatically. This is
supported in: guestfish, guestmount, virt-cat, virt-inspector,
virt-ls.
- New tool virt-filesystems (in C) which is a replacement for
virt-list-filesystems and virt-list-partitions, and has a superset
of the functionality of those tools.
- guestfish, guestmount and the C tools use unified command line option
parsing, so they support many common options such as '-a disk.img',
'-d libvirt-domain', '-x', '-v'. The old command line option
parsing is preserved for compatibility in scripts etc.
- guestfish no longer has any dependencies on Perl
- New man pages containing programming examples: guestfs-examples(3) (C/C++),
guestfs-ocaml(3), guestfs-python(3), guestfs-ruby(3).
- Trace mode prints return values from API functions.
- virt-inspector can list applications installed in Windows guests, along
with a great deal of information about those applications.
- Add support for inspecting: Linux Mint, Mandriva, FreeBSD.
- guestfish --rw option (with no effect currently) to make potentially
dangerous write access explicit.
- guestfish --listen --csh for compatibility with csh, tcsh (thanks
Eric Blake).
- The first upstream version that introduced each API function is now
documented in guestfs(3).
- guestfs_last_errno allows you to retrieve the errno from the
daemon, correctly translated to the local operating system.
- Some functions now support optional parameters.
Security
- New SECURITY section in guestfs(3) API documentation.
- virt-inspector no longer runs any guest commands.
- Inspection code is more careful about avoiding very large files
from guests which might previously have caused a denial of service.
New APIs
- add-domain
- add-drive-opts
- inspect-get-hostname
- inspect-get-package-format
- inspect-get-package-management
- inspect-get-roots
- inspect-list-applications
Internals
- C programs now only link precisely with the libraries that they use.
- PCRE, libmagic, hivex and libvirt libraries are now completely
optional for building.
- Multiple memory leaks and file descriptor leaks fixed.
- Add a POD wrapper to unify generation of man pages and HTML files
across all programs.
- Source includes phony images of Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu and
Windows guests.
- Ruby bindings have 'make install' rule.
- <guestfs.h> is now a single file.
- <guestfs.h> does not require XDR headers.
- ocaml xml-light library is no longer required to build (thanks
Maxim Koltsov).
- ./configure --disable-[...] for each language binding (thanks
Maxim Koltsov).
- Old ocaml-viewer program removed (use guestfs-browser instead).
Bugs fixed
- 657499 checksum: wrong check sum type causes umount to fail
- 655554 Whole disk paths are not made canonical by virt-inspector
- 654638 openssl updated to 1.0.0b libguestfs depends on exact file names
- 652796 ruby bindings not installed by 'make install', hence omitted from the binary distribution
Release notes for libguestfs 1.6.0
----------------------------------
These release notes only cover the differences from the previous
stable/dev branch split (1.4.0). For detailed changelogs, please see
the git repository, or the ChangeLog file distributed in the tarball.
New features
- Use a new method for creating and caching the appliance. This
greatly improves the performance of libguestfs, often by a factor
of x 4 to x 5.
- Support for guest inspection (like virt-inspector) via the ordinary
API and all language bindings. 'guestfish -i' option is as a side-
effect much quicker.
- virt-inspector and core inspection API can now detect guests running:
Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Windows, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS,
Scientific Linux, Gentoo, Pardus, Arch Linux, MeeGo.
- Support for LUKS whole-disk encryption in guests.
- PHP bindings.
- Progress messages (and progress bars in guestfish and virt-resize)
for certain long-running operations.
- virt-df is now much more efficient. Use '--one-per-guest' to restore
the old per-guest isolation behaviour.
- guestfish 'copy-in' and 'copy-out' commands for copying files and
directories recursively in and out of the guest.
- guestfish 'hexedit' command for doing binary edits to devices and
files.
- Change guestfish -i syntax to allow commands to be specified on the
command line (retaining backwards compatibility).
- guestfish '-d <domain>' for adding disks from libvirt domains.
- guestfish '-N' option supports several new prepared disk image types:
lvfs : disk with LV formatted with filesystem
lv : disk with LV
bootroot : boot+root
bootrootlv : boot and root on LV
- guestfish 'more' and 'edit' commands now work with arbitrary files.
- guestfish '--echo-keys' option allows you to echo keys/passphrases
while typing them.
- guestmount now supports -a / -d / -i options, like guestfish.
- Use virtio-serial for communications with the appliance. This
also has a major performance benefit.
- virt-edit '-b' option to create a backup of edited files.
- virt-edit '-e' option for non-interactive edits to files.
- Ability to capture core dumps from the appliance (thanks Matthew Booth).
- virt-rescue now shuts down cleanly (thanks Matthew Booth).
- virt-rescue now has a --network option to enable network access.
- virt-resize can now handle guests which use GPT partition table format.
- virt-resize has better support for shrinking guests.
- virt-resize supports qcow2-format guests.
- $TMPDIR can be used to override almost all temporary directory usage.
- OCaml users can use an alternate OO-style of coding, eg. g#launch ()
- The API supports calls which take optional parameters, eg.
$g->add_drive_opts ("disk", readonly => 1);
- Trace output now escapes and shortens large strings (thanks
Matthew Booth).
- Autosync is now on by default, resulting in more reliable behaviour
when the handle is closed.
- virt-df --uuid option allows you to follow a domain across migration
and renaming.
- Translations of manual pages.
Security
- CVE-2010-3851 libguestfs: missing disk format specifier when adding a disk
https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2010-October/msg00036.html
This is comprehensively fixed in this release, and the fix will be
backported to the other stable branches after more testing.
- virt-inspector no longer relies on untrusted guest code to list
applications in some guests.
New APIs
download-offset, file-architecture, findfs-label, findfs-uuid,
inspect-os, inspect-get-arch, inspect-get-distro,
inspect-get-filesystems, inspect-get-major-version,
inspect-get-minor-version, inspect-get-mountpoints,
inspect-get-product-name, inspect-get-type, is-blockdev, is-chardev,
is-fifo, is-lv, is-socket, is-symlink, list-filesystems, luks-add-key,
luks-close, luks-format, luks-format-cipher, luks-kill-slot,
luks-open, luks-open-ro, lvm-clear-filter, lvm-canonical-lv-name,
lvm-set-filter, part-to-dev, pread-device, pwrite-device,
upload-offset
Internals
- Use size_t for loop iterators.
- Refactor the library code into separate files.
- Refactor the generator code into separate files.
- Generate guestfish commands.
- guestfish & guestmount options processing is unified.
- Protocol changes:
error message size increased to 64K
send errno to library
- Add 'make bindist' to make a binary distribution.
- Cleaner behaviour under valgrind.
- More testing of the guestfish command line options and libvirt
integration.
- The Perl inspection code is no longer used by any of the tools.
Bugs fixed
- 646822 libguestfs trace mode should not print long binary strings
- 646821 virt-df should have --uuid option
- 646432 /dev/mapper paths should not be returned from guestfs_mountpoints
- 643624 libguestfs tools documentation should describe how to quote guest domain names from shell
- 642934 No way to specify disk format when adding a disk to libguestfs
- 642933 guestfs_list_filesystems should be used in all possible places
- 642932 guestmount options should match guestfish options
- 642930 virt-inspector (Sys::Guestfs::Lib) should use C inspection APIs
- 642929 C inspection code should ignore /dev/fd* in /etc/fstab
- 642826 virt-resize converts any other image format to raw without notifying user, instructions do not account for this
- 640961 Document that grub-install might be needed for old Linux guests after virt-resize
- 639986 virt-df --csv does not properly quote " in libvirt domain names
- 639405 Interrupted cached appliance creation leaves libguestfs unusable
- 638901 Appliance filename should not contain repository name
- 638899 /dev/mapper paths should not be returned from C inspection APIs
- 636918 Updates to Spanish translation
- 636061 [abrt] guestfish-1.2.11-1.fc12: malloc_consolidate: Process /usr/bin/guestfish was killed by signal 11 (SIGSEGV)
- 635969 glob echo mkfs ext2 /dev/vd[b-t]1 prints garbage
- 634246 guestfs_part_get_parttype returns "loop" when run against a partition, LV or filesystem
- 633766 virt-resize --shrink fails
- 633357 Updates to Spanish translation
- 633096 virt-resize calculates block device size incorrectly, doesn't work with qcow2 target
- 629593 Dutch translation added
- 627556 Updates to Spanish translations of libguestfs
- 626843 Updates to Spanish translations
- 619793 [RFE] Need a way to determine if a particular block device is a logical volume
- 618556 virt-rescue return none zero value when exit
- 617200 mount operation failed and hung on some images which running in read-only mode
- 610880 libguestfs should set broader read perms on tmpdir, so works in some situations when executed with umask 077
- 599503 document that mkmountpoint and umount-all cannot be mixed
- 571714 Running virt-df on disk image relabels it, so qemu can no longer write to it.
- 502533 Updated Polish translation of libguestfs
Release notes for libguestfs 1.4.0
----------------------------------
These release notes only cover the differences from the previous
stable/dev branch split (1.2.0). For detailed changelogs, please see
the git repository, or the ChangeLog file distributed in the tarball.
New features
- guestfish lets you choose a prepared disk image, eg:
guestfish -N fs:ext4
- Add write support to guestmount (FUSE) module.
- virt-resize can now resize the content of partitions and logical
volumes in the guest, and we have better support for shrinking guests.
- Bash tab-completion script for guestfish.
- Add ZFS support to virt-rescue.
- New tool 'virt-make-fs' for creating filesystems with content.
- Allow suffixes on any guestfish number parameter, eg. "1M".
- guestfish 'man' command opens the manual page.
- guestfish supports a "heredoc" syntax for uploading files:
upload -<<_end_ /foo
content
_end_
- Some guestfish commands now print their output in octal or hex
where appropriate (RHBZ#583242).
- Allow dash prefix on guestfish command line. This ignores any
error from the second command: (RHBZ#578407)
guestfish -- cmd1 : -cmd2 : cmd3
- guestfish -h / help command now returns an error for non-existent
commands (RHBZ#597145).
- New 'supported' command in guestfish to list optional groups of
commands which are supported by the daemon / configuration.
- virt-inspector and guestfish -i now work for filenames which
contain spaces (RHBZ#507810).
- Change the protocol to use link-local addresses, to avoid
conflicting with any address that the host might be using
(RHBZ#588763).
- libguestfs now sets the correct time and timezone on filesystem
modifications.
- Sort the domains into alphabetical order in virt-df.
- Make mkfs-b command work for FAT and NTFS by mapping the blocksize
parameter to the cluster size (RHBZ#599464).
- Add version numbers to Perl modules (RHBZ#521674).
- Localization now works for all the libguestfs tools (RHBZ#559963).
- Tools now support filesystem-on-image VMs (RHBZ#590167).
- virt-list-partitions has a '-t' option to show the total size of disks.
- Include extra Augeas lenses in the supermin appliance (Matthew Booth).
- Add error and close callbacks.
- Add explicit close method in the Perl API.
- Multiple fixes for RHEL 5 compatibility.
- Multiple fixes for Debian/Ubuntu compatibility.
- Multiple revisions to improve the documentation.
Security
- Fix a potential DoS in virt-inspector and virt-v2v if a specially
crafted disk image contained a char device in place of one of the
configuration files that we read under /etc (RHBZ#582484).
New APIs
- aug-clear - clear Augeas path
- available-all-groups - return a list of all optional groups
- base64-in - upload base64-encoded data to file
- base64-out - download file and encode as base64
- checksum-device - compute checksums on the contents of a device
- checksums-out - compute checksums of multiple files in a directory
- debug-upload - upload a file to the appliance
- fallocate64 - preallocate a file in the guest filesystem
- fill-pattern - fill a file with a repeating pattern of bytes
- get-umask - get the current umask
- lvresize-free - expand an LV to fill free space
- ntfsresize - resize an NTFS filesystem
- ntfsresize-size - resize an NTFS filesystem (with size)
- part-del - delete a partition
- part-get-bootable - get the bootable flag of a partition
- part-get-mbr-id - get the MBR type byte of a partition
- part-set-mbr-id - set the MBR type byte of a partition
- pvresize-size - resize a physical volume (with size)
- pwrite - write to part of a file
- resize2fs-size - resize an ext2/3/4 filesystem (with size)
- txz-in - unpack compressed tarball to directory (RHBZ#580556)
- txz-out - pack directory into compressed tarball (RHBZ#580556)
- vfs-label - get the filesystem label
- vfs-uuid - get the filesystem UUID
- vgscan - rescan for LVM physical volumes, volume groups and logical volumes
- write - create a new file
- zero-device - write zeroes to an entire device
Internals
- Extend the generator to support testing optional features.
- Stricter checks on input parameters to many calls (RHBZ#501893 RHBZ#501894)
- Extend the protocol to support sending arbitrary 8 bit data buffers.
- Ship 'BUGS' file with releases. This is a summary of the bugs in
the Red Hat Bugzilla database.
- Ship 'RELEASE-NOTES' file with releases, containing release notes.
- Unify supermin appliance building into one place, in febootstrap 2.7.
- Fix the protocol code to handle the case where both ends send cancel
messages at the same time.
Bugs fixed
- 612178 guestfish: using -m option in conjunction with --listen option causes appliance to die
- 610880 libguestfs should set broader read perms on tmpdir, so works in some situations when executed with umask 077
- 604691 OCaml bindings are not thread safe
- 603870 Updates to Spanish translation
- 602592 [RFE] expose guestfs_close in perl bindings
- 600977 virt-df -h --csv "Argument .. isn't numeric in printf"
- 599464 mkfs-b does not support vfat/ntfs
- 598807 add_cdrom does not work in RHEL 6
- 598309 part-list and several other cmd failed on libguestfs on RHEL5
- 597145 guestfish 'help' command should indicate error in exit status with an unknown command
- 597135 guestfish write-file cmd does not check "size" parameter
- 597118 A warning should be given in the help of mke2journal-L for the length of label
- 597112 get-e2uuid should use blkid instead of "tune2fs -l" to get filesystem UUID
- 596776 virt-inspector doesn't discover modprobe aliases on RHEL 3 guests
- 596763 Updates to Spanish translation
- 593292 Updates to Spanish translation
- 592883 can not edit files on images mounted with guestmount cmd
- 592360 Updates to Spanish translation
- 591250 virt-tar prints "tar_in: tar subcommand failed on directory" if the archive is compressed or not in the right format
- 591155 virt-tar prints "tar_in: tar subcommand failed on directory" if a disk image is not writable
- 591142 virt-inspector should give an error for unrecognized disk images
- 590167 virt-inspector and other virt tools should be able to handle filesystem-on-image VMs
- 589039 guestfish read-file cmd will cause daemon hang when read large files
- 588851 guestfs_launch() returns -1, but guestfs_last_error() == NULL
- 588763 libguestfs should use non-public or link-local addresses for appliance network
- 588733 Updates to Spanish translation
- 588651 guestfish 'strings-e' cmd does not give proper error message or hint
- 587484 lvresize can't reduce size of a volumn
- 585961 Updates to Spanish translation
- 585223 ntfsresize should support shrinking filesystems
- 585222 pvresize should support shrinking PVs
- 585221 resize2fs should support shrinking filesystems
- 584038 Updates to Spanish translation
- 583554 [FEAT] mknod-mode command is needed to set mode explicitly
- 583242 [RFE] guestfish should print outputs in a suitable base (eg. octal for modes)
- 582993 guestfish eats words when tab completing case (in)sensitive paths
- 582953 Misleading help information about lvcreate command
- 582948 mknod command doesn't make block, character or FIFO devices
- 582929 mknod doesn't check for invalid mode
- 582901 guestfish chmod/umask commands do not check invalid mode value
- 582899 guestfish:sparse is missed from command autocomplete list
- 582891 [Feature Request] behavior and return value of guestfish umask cmd should be changed
- 582548 [mknod] umask shouldn't take effect when mode is set explicitly
- 582484 some guestfish sub commands can not handle special files properly
- 582252 Updates to Spanish translation
- 581501 Updates to Spanish translation
- 580650 virt-inspector warns "No grub default specified at /usr/lib/perl5/Sys/Guestfs/Lib.pm at [...]"
- 580556 request for libguestfs to support .txz tarballs
- 580246 tar-in command hangs if uploading more than available space
- 580016 aug-ls in guestfish does not take augeas variable as argument
- 579664 guestfish doesn't report error when there is not enough space for image allocation
- 579608 multiple commands in guestfish can not work for symbol links
- 579155 libguestfs hangs if qemu doesn't start (in null vmchannel mode)
- 578407 the prefix '-' in sub-command isn't handled by guestfish in remote control mode
- 576879 libguestfs protocol loses synchronization if you 'upload' before mounting disks
- 559963 libguestfs Perl programs do set locale, but still localization doesn't work
- 521674 Perl modules are unversioned, but should carry version numbers
- 516096 Race condition in test_swapon_label_0: /sbin/blockdev: BLKRRPART: Device or resource busy
- 507810 guestfish -i / virt-inspector cannot handle spaces in filenames
- 502533 Updated Polish translation of libguestfs
- 501894 Some String parameters should be OptString
- 501893 String parameters should be checked for != NULL
- 501889 write-file does not support strings containing ASCII NUL
- 484986 grub-install fails on virtio disk
Release notes for previous versions of libguestfs
-------------------------------------------------
2009-11-10 : 1.0.78
https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2009-November/msg00095.html
2009-09-13 : 1.0.67
https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2009-August/msg00281.html
2009-07-23 : 1.0.64
https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2009-July/msg00059.html
2009-07-14 : 1.0.59
https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2009-July/msg00023.html