[Libguestfs] ANNOUNCE: nbdkit 1.30 and libnbd 1.12 released
Richard W.M. Jones
rjones at redhat.com
Thu Feb 24 19:08:58 UTC 2022
nbdkit is a Network Block Device (NBD) server with stable plugin ABI
and permissive license. libnbd is an NBD client library.
I'm pleased to announce the latest stable releases of both projects:
nbdkit 1.30.0 and libnbd 1.12.0. You can download both from the
download directories here:
https://download.libguestfs.org/nbdkit/
https://download.libguestfs.org/libnbd/
Release notes are online here and attached below:
https://libguestfs.org/nbdkit-release-notes-1.30.1.html
https://libguestfs.org/libnbd-release-notes-1.12.1.html
Rich.
------------------------------
These are the release notes for nbdkit stable release 1.30. This
describes the major changes since 1.28.
nbdkit 1.30.0 was released on 24 February 2022.
Security
There were no security issues found. All past security issues and
information about how to report new ones can be found in
nbdkit-security(1).
Plugins
nbdkit-streaming-plugin has been removed. It was deprecated in 1.26
and scheduled for removal in this release. If you were using this
plugin, use nbdcopy(1) instead.
nbdkit-vddk-plugin(1) has several changes:
• This plugin can now create (as well as reading and writing) local
VMDK files. See the new "create=true" option and the various
"create-*" options.
• Read and write is now implemented using the VDDK Async functions,
which improves performance. The full nbdkit parallel thread model
is supported.
• VDDK ≥ 6.5 (released Nov 2016) is now the minimum required version.
• Stats collected when using -D vddk.stats=1 have been extended to
include number of calls and bytes transferred.
• --dump-plugin output now includes the VDDK major version and
information about each VDDK API that is implemented by the library.
• A new example scripts/vddk-open.sh is provided to help with
automating connections to remote ESXi virtual machines.
nbdkit-curl-plugin(1) adds support for choosing TLS/SSL versions and
ciphers and TLS 1.3 cipher versions (Przemyslaw Czarnowski).
nbdkit-file-plugin(1) now implements "cache=none" for writes so that
the Linux page cache is not destroyed when writing huge files.
nbdkit-cc-plugin(1) now implements the ".cleanup" callback. Also we
document how to use this plugin to implement OCaml plugin scripts.
nbdkit-info-plugin(1) --dump-plugin option now prints
"info_address=yes" when the platform supports "mode=address".
Filters
New nbdkit-retry-request-filter(1), which is similar to
nbdkit-retry-filter(1) but only retries a single failing request.
New nbdkit-protect-filter(1) lets you add write-protection over regions
of a plugin.
New nbdkit-blocksize-policy-filter(1) lets you adjust or set the block
size constraints and policy of underlying plugins. See "API" below.
nbdkit-cow-filter(1) now permits the COW block size to be set as small
as 4096 bytes.
Debug messages in nbdkit-error-filter(1) are now easier to read because
they no longer all have an "error:" prefix (Eric Blake).
Language bindings
For plugins written in OCaml the minimum version of OCaml is now 4.03
(instead of 4.02.2 previously). Various source-level incompatible
changes were made to OCaml plugins in this release. Please consult the
new documentation and example if writing plugins in OCaml.
OCaml plugins now support "magic_config_key".
Several fixes to the handling of integers in Python plugins (Nir
Soffer).
New Python example which simulates request errors (Nir Soffer).
Server
The server no longer requests the "AI_ADDRCONFIG" hint when opening a
server socket. This improves handling of IPv6. In a related change,
the -i (--ipaddr) option now works as intended, and new -4 and -6
options have been added to restrict the listening socket to IPv4 or
IPv6 addresses (Laszlo Ersek).
API
There is a new ".block_size" callback for plugins and filters. nbdkit
uses this to export block size constraints to clients, specifically the
minimum, preferred and maximum block size that clients should use.
As well as regular C plugins, nbdkit-cc-plugin(3),
nbdkit-eval-plugin(1), nbdkit-ocaml-plugin(3), nbdkit-python-plugin(3)
and nbdkit-sh-plugin(3) support block size constraints.
nbdkit-nbd-plugin(1) reexports block size constraints from the proxied
NBD server. nbdkit-vddk-plugin(1) now advertises a minimum 512 byte
block size.
nbdkit-blocksize-filter(1), nbdkit-cache-filter(1),
nbdkit-cow-filter(1) and nbdkit-swab-filter(1) adjust block size
constraints from plugins (Eric Blake).
nbdkit-blocksize-filter(1) can also use the block size hints from the
plugin instead of needing manual adjustment on the command line.
nbdkit-log-filter(1) logs block size constraints (Eric Blake).
nbdkit-blocksize-policy-filter(1) can be used to add block size
constraints to plugins which don't support it, or adjust constraints,
or set the error policy.
Bug fixes
nbdkit-memory-plugin(1) (and others), using
"allocator=malloc,mlock=true" was broken. This was especially evident
on non-Linux or on Linux with 64K pages (eg. POWER). It should now
work correctly.
Tests
"./configure --disable-libguestfs-tests" can now be used to disable
tests which need libguestfs, without disabling
nbdkit-guestfs-plugin(1).
We now use mke2fs(8) instead of guestfish(1) to create the ext4 test
image. On armv7 this allows the test suite to run much more quickly.
The time taken to run the test suite has been reduced significantly.
Build
Multiple fixes to the Windows (MinGW) build. The test suite should now
pass fully if you have the version of Wine with the unofficial
"AF_UNIX" patch.
The top level bash source directory has been renamed to bash-
completion. This prevents problems when setting $PATH to the source
directory and trying to run bash.
Internals
The performance of the internal vector library has been improved
greatly and overflow is now handled correctly (Nir Soffer, Laszlo Ersek
and Eric Blake).
New "nbdkit-string.h" header file which defines a common string type
(based on vector). Existing places which defined a string based on
vector have been updated to use it.
"MIN" and "MAX" macros can be nested (thanks Eric Blake).
SEE ALSO
nbdkit(1).
AUTHORS
Authors of nbdkit 1.30:
Alan Somers
Eric Blake
Hilko Bengen
Laszlo Ersek
Nir Soffer
Przemyslaw Czarnowski
Richard W.M. Jones
------------------------------
These are the release notes for libnbd stable release 1.12. This
describes the major changes since 1.10.
libnbd 1.12.0 was released on 24 February 2022.
Security
CVE-2022-0485
Silent data corruption when using nbdcopy(1).
See the full announcement here:
https://listman.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2022-February/msg00104.html
If you find a security issue, please read SECURITY in the source
(online here: https://gitlab.com/nbdkit/libnbd/blob/master/SECURITY).
To find out about previous security issues in libnbd, see
libnbd-security(3).
New APIs
get_pread_initialize
set_pread_initialize
Control whether libnbd clears the pread buffer to avoid leaking
memory contents if the client does not properly handle errors.
These were added as part of the fix for CVE-2022-0485 (Eric Blake).
get_request_block_size
set_request_block_size
Control whether libnbd requests block size constraints from the
server during negotiation (Eric Blake).
Enhancements to existing APIs
Error messages about incorrect URIs in nbd_connect_uri(3) have been
improved to make common mistakes clearer for the user.
Tools
New syntax: "nbdinfo [ CMD ... ]" allowing you to query the properties
of an NBD server directly.
nbdcopy(1) new --queue-size option to control the maximum size of the
internal buffer.
nbdcopy(1) now names the source and destination handles to make it
easier to understand debug output.
Tests
Adopt libvirt-ci's ci/gitlab.yml (Martin Kletzander).
Fix the OCaml extents example (thanks Laszlo Ersek).
Golang benchmarks were added to the test suite (Nir Soffer).
The large tests/errors.c test was split into about a dozen separate
tests. Also this adds a new test for checking server-side block size
constraint error policy which was missing before.
Other improvements and bug fixes
New OCaml "NBD.with_handle" helper which ensures that "NBD.close" is
always called even if the inner code throws an exception.
The OCaml bindings now consistently use the correct types for buffer
sizes everywhere (Laszlo Ersek).
Several improvements and fixes to the golang bindings and tests. The
golang bindings have been relicensed to LGPLv2+ like the rest of the
library and are now published as a golang module at
https://libguestfs.org/libnbd (Nir Soffer).
The Python bindings no longer crash if you pass "None" in place of a
buffer parameter. In addition some memory leaks were fixed (Eric
Blake).
Various memory leaks have been fixed when using the optional
strict_mode settings (Eric Blake).
The performance of the internal vector library has been improved
greatly and overflow is now handled correctly (Nir Soffer, Laszlo Ersek
and Eric Blake).
Add "simple_copy" and "aio_copy" Golang examples (Nir Soffer).
Error handling was reviewed and fixed across many of the example
programs and documentation (Eric Blake, Nir Soffer).
Simplify and optimize handling of the extents callback in Golang (Nir
Soffer).
Golang AioBuffer was enhanced, making it safer to use, faster and
adding documentation (Nir Soffer).
Documentation
Document the limits on lengths and sizes of parameters to various APIs
(Eric Blake).
Build
You can now build programs that use the OCaml bindings of libnbd
against the libnbd build directory instead of requiring libnbd to be
installed (Laszlo Ersek).
Compatibility with OCaml 4.13.
Line locations in the state machine should be more accurate when
stepping through with a debugger like gdb.
.editorconfig file can be used to help code formatting, see
https://editorconfig.org/ (Nir Soffer, Eric Blake).
"MIN" and "MAX" macros can be nested (thanks Eric Blake).
SEE ALSO
libnbd(3).
AUTHORS
Eric Blake
Laszlo Ersek
Martin Kletzander
Nir Soffer
Richard W.M. Jones
--
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
Read my programming and virtualization blog: http://rwmj.wordpress.com
virt-p2v converts physical machines to virtual machines. Boot with a
live CD or over the network (PXE) and turn machines into KVM guests.
http://libguestfs.org/virt-v2v
More information about the Libguestfs
mailing list