[Libguestfs] [ANNOUNCE] libguestfs 1.4.0 - tools for accessing and modifying disk images and virtual machines
Richard W.M. Jones
rjones at redhat.com
Thu Jul 8 13:09:36 UTC 2010
I'm pleased to announce a major new release of libguestfs.
libguestfs is a library and a set of tools for accessing and modifying
disk images and virtual machines. You can use this for viewing and
editing files inside guests, scripting changes to VMs, monitoring disk
used/free statistics, P2V, V2V, performing partial backups, cloning
VMs, and much more.
Home page: http://libguestfs.org/
Downloads: http://libguestfs.org/download/?C=M;O=D
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
--
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
Read my programming blog: http://rwmj.wordpress.com
Fedora now supports 80 OCaml packages (the OPEN alternative to F#)
http://cocan.org/getting_started_with_ocaml_on_red_hat_and_fedora
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