New features¶

libvirt and sVirt (SELinux confinement)

You can optionally use libvirt to launch and manage the backend appliance by:

• setting "LIBGUESTFS_ATTACH_METHOD=libvirt[:URI]"
• using "./configure --with-default-attach-method=libvirt[:URI]"
• or calling the API method "guestfs_set_attach_method"

SVirt (SELinux confinement) is used to secure the libguestfs appliance, if the libvirt backend is selected.

virtio-scsi, larger number of drives, hotplugging

Virtio-scsi is now used by default, if it is available. This greatly increases the number of drives that can be added to a single libguestfs handle (up to 255).

You can now hotplug drives (add and remove drives after launch).

Libguestfs can now handle > 25 disks, in all APIs, tools and tests.

You can label drives when adding them, then refer to them by label ("/dev/disk/guestfs/LABEL") instead of having to use device names ("/dev/sda").

new library features

POSIX Access Control Lists (ACLs) and Linux filesystem capabilities can now be read and written through the API.

Windows Dynamic Disks are now supported. The metadata can only be read (volumes cannot be modified or created). However the data/filesystems in the volumes themselves can be mounted, read and written (Matthew Booth).

Hivex (Windows Registry editing) is now directly supported through the API, making reading or editing the Windows Registry much more efficient.

Several libguestfs APIs were reimplemented so they no longer have any limits on output. The reimplemented APIs are: "guestfs_cat", "guestfs_find", "guestfs_read_file", "guestfs_read_lines", "guestfs_write", "guestfs_write_append", "guestfs_lstatlist", "guestfs_lxattrlist", "guestfs_readlinklist", "guestfs_ls".

virt tools

"guestfish touch 'win:c:\new_file'" now works as expected.

"guestfish" has a new --network option, which enables the user network in libguestfs.

You can set "GUESTFISH_PS1" to use fancy prompts in "guestfish".

"rsync", "ssh", "less" and "lrzip" commands are now available in virt-rescue. In addition, "rsync" can be used through the API for doing incremental copies.

"virt-sparsify" uses qcow2 v3 for increased efficiency.

"virt-sysprep" enhancements:

• generate new UUIDs for PVs and VGs
• remove the local machine ID (Wanlong Gao)
• remove ABRT data (Wanlong Gao)
• remove puppet keys and log files (Wanlong Gao)
• remove process accounting files (Wanlong Gao)
• new --firstboot parameter allowing firstboot scripts for customizing guests
• remove HOSTNAME field from "ifcfg-eth*" files (Wanlong Gao)
• miscellaneous improvements for SuSE (Olaf Hering)
• remove man pages cache (Wanlong Gao)
• remove crash data generated by kexec-tools (Wanlong Gao)

"virt-make-fs" can now create virtual floppy disks (VFDs).

"guestmount" has a --pid-file option, which can be used to avoid a race condition between unmounting the filesystem and using the underlying disk image.

language bindings

Full-featured Lua bindings have been added in this release (thanks to Jerome Vuarand for many suggestions).

In Ruby, optional arguments hash is optional.

In Python, optional arguments now don't use special "sentinel" values, so any integer can be passed as an optional argument.

Erlang bindings now come with examples and tests.

Erlang bindings now handle 64 bit integer parameters correctly.

The automated 'bindtests' now test for 64 bit cleanliness in parameter passing. Several bugs in the bindings were found and fixed as a result.

Better handling of blocking and non-blocking functions should make libguestfs calls more efficient.

inspection

Windows guests with unlimited-sized Registries are now supported. By adding the hivex API to the libguestfs API, it is much more efficient and easier to inspect and modify the Windows Registry in guests.

Better support for SuSE guests (Olaf Hering).

Return the architecture of installed applications (John Eckersberg).

Windows 8 is now supported.

Fedora 18 is now supported.

Inspection of ISOs/CDs/DVDs can now use the libosinfo database.

ports

Libguestfs without the appliance can be compiled on Mac OS X (Masami HIRATA).

RHEL 5 is now explicitly supported through the 'oldlinux' branch in upstream git.

PowerPC 64 bit is now supported. Also libguestfs has been examined for endianness bugs and these have been fixed.

daemon

A man page for the daemon (guestfsd(8)) is included.

Security¶

guestfish history file

The "$HOME/.guestfish" history file is now created with 0600 permissions (instead of 0644 before) so it is no longer world readable.

CVE-2012-2690

Old versions of both "virt-edit" and the "guestfish" "edit" command created a new file containing the changes but did not set the permissions, etc of the new file to match the old one. The result of this was that if you edited a security sensitive file such as "/etc/shadow" then it would be left world-readable after the edit.

This issue was assigned CVE-2012-2690, and is fixed in libguestfs ≥ 1.16.

For further information, see https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=788642

New APIs¶

 acl-delete-def-file
 acl-get-file
 acl-set-file
 canonical-device-name
 cap-get-file
 cap-set-file
 create-flags
 device-index
 disk-has-backing-file
 disk-format
 disk-virtual-size
 filesystem-available
 fill-dir
 fstrim
 get-cachedir
 get-libvirt-requested-credentials
 get-libvirt-requested-credential-prompt
 get-libvirt-requested-credential-challenge
 get-libvirt-requested-credential-defresult
 get-tmpdir
 hivex-close
 hivex-commit
 hivex-node-add-child
 hivex-node-children
 hivex-node-delete-child
 hivex-node-get-child
 hivex-node-get-value
 hivex-node-name
 hivex-node-parent
 hivex-node-set-value
 hivex-node-values
 hivex-open
 hivex-root
 hivex-value-key
 hivex-value-type
 hivex-value-utf8
 hivex-value-value
 inspect-list-applications2 (John Eckersberg)
 list-ldm-volumes
 list-ldm-partitions
 ldmtool-create-all
 ldmtool-diskgroup-disks
 ldmtool-diskgroup-name
 ldmtool-diskgroup-volumes
 ldmtool-remove-all
 ldmtool-scan
 ldmtool-scan-devices
 ldmtool-volume-hint
 ldmtool-volume-partitions
 ldmtool-volume-type
 ls0
 max-disks
 mke2fs (Wanlong Gao)
 mklost-and-found
 mkswap [added label and uuid optional arguments]
 mktemp (Wanlong Gao)
 nr-devices
 parse-environment
 parse-environment-list
 rm-f
 rsync
 rsync-in
 rsync-out
 set-cachedir
 set-libvirt-supported-credentials
 set-libvirt-requested-credential
 set-tmpdir
 shutdown [backported to 1.16 and 1.18]
 tar-in [added compress flag]
 tar-out [added compress, numericowner, excludes flags]
 umount [added force and lazy optional arguments]
 utsname
 xfs-admin (Wanlong Gao)
 xfs-growfs (Wanlong Gao)
 xfs-info (Wanlong Gao)
 xfs-repair (Wanlong Gao)

In the C API only:

 guestfs_push_error_handler
 guestfs_pop_error_handler

Internals¶

qemu ≥ 1.1 is required (≥ 1.2 preferred).

febootstrap ≥ 3.20 is required.

libvirt is optional, but if you want to use the new libvirt backend for launching the appliance then libvirt ≥ 0.10.2 would be required.

Coverity has been run over the complete codebase, and many issues fixed (thanks Ondrej Vasik, Kamil Dudka).

Functions which previously had no optargs can now be converted to ones with optargs, making extending the API much more flexible. Source and binary backwards compatibility is preserved for users of the API.

The way that libguestfs APIs and structures are represented in the generator has changed to use an OCaml struct instead of a tuple. This makes generator descriptions more flexible and easier to understand. For details see commits 39d1a7db and eb185eef.

Separation of the library code into more files:

• Launch backends are now located in separate files eg. "src/launch-appliance.c", "src/launch-libvirt.c".
• Generated action code is now split over several "src/action*.c" files, for faster compilation.
• The huge "src/guestfs.c" file is now split into smaller logical units.

POD (documentation) is now generated using a rewritten Perl program instead of pod2* + shell scripts.

Man pages now contain stable dates (Hilko Bengen).

Skipped tests now exit with code 77, so they appear as "SKIP:" in "make check" output.

The parallel mount-local test has been rewritten in C (RHBZ#838081).

Ruby 1.8.5 is now supported (though Ruby ≥ 1.9 is preferred).

Perl bindings can be disabled via "./configure --disable-perl" (Wulf C. Krueger). Note that Perl is still required in order to build libguestfs.

Java bindings are now enabled/disabled using "./configure --with-java" or "./configure --without-java" (Wulf C. Krueger).

New configure options "./configure --enable-code-profiling" and "./configure --enable-code-coverage".

Multiple fixes to use of 64 bit integers in language bindings.

The appliance backend now uses sgabios instead of vgabios (Dan Berrange).

The "./run" script now sets enough environment variables that you can run OCaml, Python, Ruby, Java, GJS, Erlang, Lua programs.

"./run --test" flag for running tests with minimal output. It also prints the time taken to run each test.

The "./run" script now builds up paths cumulatively, meaning that you can use "./run" twice, or use the libguestfs and libvirt "./run" scripts together.

You can extract a list of external commands required by the daemon, making building the appliance on certain distros easier (Olaf Hering).

The "virt-rescue" command is now tested during "make check".

The generator now removes unused generated files. This helps when going back and forth with git rebase, git bisect, etc.

Tests now run in a separate toplevel "tmp/" directory in the source. This allows the directory to be labelled for SELinux (sVirt), and also makes it easier to clean up.

"make syntax-check" now works to a greater extent, and many problems in the main code that were found by syntax-check have been fixed (thanks Jim Meyering).

Emacs mode (-*- foo -*-) has been added to generated files.

Progress bar output is now sent to "/dev/tty" so it doesn't end up in the regular output of the program. virt-resize and virt-sparsify now suppress progress bars if stdout is not a tty.

There is now a "./configure --without-libvirt" option. This is useful for testing that the code still compiles without libvirt.

There is now an internal mini-library for running commands. This allows us to redirect errors from external commands into events.

Code for handling temporary directories and the appliance cache was completely overhauled.

Code for temporarily ignoring/disabling errors now looks like this:

 guestfs_push_error_handler (g, NULL, NULL);
 guestfs_mkdir (g, "/foo"); /* We don't care if this fails. */
 guestfs_pop_error_handler (g);

The "tests/extra" directory has gone. The "extra tests" are now split into separately runnable targets, such as "make check-valgrind". Use "make help" to get a summary of the targets.

The "lpj" option is passed to the appliance kernel when using TCG. This should improve clock stability (thanks Marcelo Tosatti, Olaf Hering).

Bugs fixed¶

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/882417

libguestfs tools fail with odd error messages if TMPDIR is not an absolute path

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/882299

Windows 8 guest disks can't be mounted: "The NTFS partition is in an unsafe state. Please resume and shutdown Windows fully (no hibernation or fast restarting), or mount the volume read-only with the 'ro' mount option."

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/881953

libguestfs: migration to /etc/hostname, /etc/vconsole.conf, /etc/locale.conf

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/880801

virt-df with two -a options displays incorrect disk image name

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/879416

libguestfs-test-tool pauses when you use --help option

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/876579

mke2fs API does not apply block device naming translation to journaldevice optarg

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/860235

SELinux policy ought to allow qemu to write to unconfined_u:object_r:user_tmp_t:s0

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/859949

RFE: inspect-list-applications does not return the architecture of RPM packages

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/859885

inspect-list-applications does not list all installed RPM packages with same name and different versions

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/859876

guestfish printed paths are not canonicalized

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/859875

Progress bar output should go to tty(?) stderr(?)

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/858696

virt-sysprep reports Guestfs.Error("read_lines: fopen: /etc/sysconfig/network: No such file or directory") on some Fedora guests

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/858128

libguestfs fail to list devices added by add-drive-ro-with-if twice

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/858126

virt-inspector fail to work with some windows guests

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/853762

virt-sparsify should use a more robust method to detect the input format

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/853393

libvirt doesn't label console, serial sockets

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/853159

virt-rescue in Fedora 18 is completely broken

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/852394

libguestfs inspection limits registries to 100 MiB

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/852194

virt-sparsify --compress fails if output is raw format

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/847881

RFE: allow extra arguments (like --exclude) to tar-out

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/847880

tar-out should allow (or force) --numeric-owner

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/845522

guestfish "copy-out / localdir" command fails with "No such file or directory"

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/845488

Long filenames on NTFS cause tar-out, copy-out etc to fail with error "Cannot open: File name too long"

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/842307

RFE: Need help designing and implementing selinux policy for libguestfs/sVirt

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/840572

virt-make-fs / tar-in should support vfat properly

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/840115

guestfish touch problem - case_sensitive_path API expects the file to exist

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/836710

Data loss when writing to qcow2-format disk files

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/834712

lvresize, lvresize-free fail unnecessarily if you don't change the size of the LV: "New size (nn extents) matches existing size (nn extents)"

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/824716

compress-device-out didn't support bzip2

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/824043

guestfish unrecognized mount option gives confusing error message

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/823887

Filenames containing Chinese characters can't be created on vfat filesystems

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/823885

virt-make-fs cannot create vfat filesystem containing filesystems with Chinese characters

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/823883

virt-make-fs -t fat fails with an obscure error message

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/823821

Inspection fails when /etc/HOSTNAME is empty

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/801117

libguestfs cannot get icon for Windows 8

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/798979

Ubuntu install CDs from oneiric onwards are not recognized: "multi-boot operating systems are not supported"

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/782167

libguestfs doesn't recognize Windows Dynamic disks in some configurations, eg. spanned

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/713678

Not all febootstrap messages are redirected to log callbacks

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/627675

libguestfs inspector code cannot handle /dev/disk/by-id/* paths

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/602997

part-get-bootable gives wrong result with an unordered part layout

New features¶

virt tools

   - virt-sysprep has been rewritten and expanded (thanks Wanlong Gao)
     http://libguestfs.org/virt-sysprep.1.html
   - virt-sparsify --zero is a new option that zeroes the named
     partition or filesystem
   - virt-sparsify can now safely sparsify Linux swap partitions
   - virt-sparsify fixed so it cleans up after ^C
     http://libguestfs.org/virt-sparsify.1.html
   - a new tool 'libguestfs-make-fixed-appliance' is provided to build
     fixed appliances that can be copied to other machines that don't
     have febootstrap support
     http://libguestfs.org/libguestfs-make-fixed-appliance.1.html
   - virt-filesystems now displays the parents (containers) of MD
     devices and volume groups
   - virt-alignment-scan, run with no args, displays alignment information
     for all libvirt domains
   - virt-df and virt-alignment-scan will display information from all
     guests even when a disk is inaccessible
   - virt-rescue new --scratch option to make scratch disks
     https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2012/04/26/virt-rescue-scratch/#content
   - virt-make-fs can now be used to create btrfs
   - virt-edit preserves permissions, UID, GID and SELinux context
     when editing files
   - guestfish passes the close event over stdout and remote correctly
   - guestfish new '--pipe-error' option lets you detect errors in pipe
     commands
   - guestfish globs now expand device names
   - comma and colon characters in filenames now handled correctly by
     all virt tools

inspection

   - added support for Fedora 17+
   - added support for FreeDOS
   - added support for Buildroot and Cirros
   - inspection is now compatible with Windows guests that have been
     sysprepped (thanks Grant Williamson).

API

   - broad support for btrfs added, including adding multiple devices,
     fsck, snapshots (thanks Wanlong Gao)
   - the new 'mount-local' API brings FUSE support directly into the
     core libguestfs API
     https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/tip-using-mount-local-api-from-c/#content
   - new man page: guestfs-performance(1), which contains performance
     tuning tips
     http://libguestfs.org/guestfs-performance.1.html
   - new man page: guestfs-faq(1), Frequently Asked Questions
     http://libguestfs.org/guestfs-faq.1.html
   - ENOTSUP (from guestfs_last_errno) is now returned for APIs that
     are not supported

examples

   - 'copy_over' example showing how to copy between two handles
   - 'display_icon' program displays the icon associated with a guest
   - 'mount_local.c' example shows how to use the mount-local API

Security¶

  (no security problems were found or fixed in this release)

New APIs¶

  btrfs-device-add: Add devices to a btrfs filesystem.
  btrfs-device-delete: Remove devices from a btrfs filesystem.
  btrfs-filesystem-sync: Sync a btrfs filesystem.
  btrfs-filesystem-balance: Balance a btrfs filesystem.
  btrfs-fsck: Check btrfs filesystem.
  btrfs-set-seeding: Enable or disable seeding.
  btrfs-subvolume-create: Create a btrfs snapshot.
  btrfs-subvolume-delete: Delete a btrfs snapshot.
  btrfs-subvolume-list: List btrfs snapshots and subvolumes.
  btrfs-subvolume-set-default: Set default btrfs subvolume.
  btrfs-subvolume-snapshot: Create a writable btrfs snapshot.
  get-e2attrs: List ext2 file attributes of a file.
  get-e2generation: Get ext2 file generation of a file.
  isoinfo, isoinfo-device: Get information from the header of ISO files.
  llz: List files with SELinux information.
  lvcreate-free: Create an LVM logical volume in % remaining free space.
  md-stat: Return underlying devices from an MD device.
  mkfs-brtfs: Make btrfs filesystem, with all tunables.
  mount-local, mount-local-run, umount-local: FUSE support in the API.
  ntfsclone-in, ntfsclone-out: Save, restore NTFS from backup.
  ntfsfix: Fix common errors and force Windows to check NTFS.
  set-e2attrs: Set or clear ext2 file attributes of a file.
  set-e2generation: Set ext2 file generation of a file.
  set-label: Unified interface for setting filesystem label.
  vgmeta: Get volume group metadata.
  wipefs: Wipe filesystem signatures from a device.
  zero-free-space: Zero free space in a filesystem.

Internals¶

 - The debian/ subdirectory has been removed.  We recommend you use
   the official Debian packages made by Hilko Bengen.
   http://people.debian.org/~bengen/libguestfs/
   http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=libguestfs
 - O_CLOEXEC / SOCK_CLOEXEC is now used for almost all file
   descriptors that the library opens.
 - posix_fadvise is called when sequentially reading or writing large
   files.
 - close all file descriptors and remove all signal handlers in the
   recovery process
 - multiple gcc warnings and Coverity bugs have been fixed;  many
   strict-overflow bugs have also been fixed
 - use ./configure --enable-valgrind-daemon to use valgrind on the
   daemon;  many errors have been fixed
 - use ./configure --with-qemu-options to pass extra options to qemu
 - the daemon now has a growable strings buffer type (DECLARE_STRINGSBUF)
 - the <guestfs.h> header file works with C++ and we have a regression
   test for this
 - multiple APIs which should only be called in the CONFIG state now
   give an error if they are not
 - .gitignore fixed to use absolute paths
 - gobject bindings have been expanded, including mapping libguestfs
   events to gobject signals (thanks Matt Booth)
 - gobject documentation is generated properly (thanks Matt Booth)
 - gobject header files now live in a subdirectory
 - CompareWithString test in the generator now works
 - FUInt32, FUInt64 struct field types now use the correct XDR type
 - OCaml tests are now run on bytecode and native code.
 - java -Xlint:all is used, and all warnings have been fixed
 - bmptopng, wrestool (etc) missing or failure no longer prints
   warning messages
 - ruby: Use RbConfig instead of Config.
 - PYTHONPATH is set by the ./run script.
 - appliance building is now thread-safe.
 - appliance now uses 'ip' instead of 'ifconfig' and 'netstat'
   commands
 - several fixes to make parallel builds work properly
 - guestfish --listen now cleans up properly
 - the BUSY state has been removed
 - gettextize has been removed, replaced by a simple Makefile.am
 - gettext support now covers virt-resize, virt-sparsify and virt-sysprep
 - better support for the arm architecture

Bugs fixed¶

 - 822490 virt-ls error: "libguestfs: error: checksum: path: parameter cannot be NULL"
 - 816839 data overflow error when debug progress -1
 - 816098 virt-make-fs fails to make a btrfs filesystem because it doesn't allocate enough space
 - 811872 inspection fails on ubuntu 10.04 guest with encrypted swap
 - 811650 guestfs_last_error not set when qemu fails early during launch
 - 811649 libguestfs cannot open disk images which are symlinks to files that contain ':' (colon) character
 - 811117 [RFE][virt-sysprep] net-hwaddr not removed from "ifcfg-*" files on rhel
 - 811112 [RFE][virt-sysprep] hostname can not be changed on rhel system
 - 809361 inspection doesn't recognize Fedora 18 (grub2 + GPT)
 - 807905 mkfs blocksize option breaks when creating btrfs
 - 805070 virt-filesystems should show 'parents' of LV and RAID devices
 - 804464 libguestfs cannot be built when LINGUAS is different then ja or uk
 - 803664 libguestfs inspection fails on Windows XP: libguestfs: error: hivex: could not locate HKLM\SYSTEM\MountedDevices
 - 803533 guestfish: write error
 - 802389 event handlers for 'close' event doesn't work in remote mode
 - 802109 libguestfs uses putc on stderr, results in many individual 1 byte writes of debug messages
 - 801640 [RFE] the error reported by resize2fs-M need to be more clear
 - 801298 Possible null dereference and resource leaks
 - 801273 Document for set-pgroup need to be updated
 - 798196 virt-resize confuses format and output_format variables; using --output-format sets the input format
 - 797986 virt-resize on Windows XP in sysprep state causes "UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME" BSOD
 - 796520 [RFE] Prevent user from running some appliance configure commands after appliance boot up
 - 790721 multiprovider build error: RuntimeError: link: /tmp/.guestfs-0/kernel /tmp/.guestfs-0/kernel.10139: File exists
 - 789960 guestfsd crash when try to mount non-exist disk
 - 789504 virt-df (other tools?) should not give up if a guest disk is missing
 - 788641 virt-edit doesn't preserve file permissions
 - 786215 libguestfs inspection does not recognize FreeDOS operating system
 - 786188 libguestfs inspection does not recognize FreeDOS install CD
 - 785668 aug-defnode: daemon crash
 - 784647 Libguestfs uses deprecated net-tools
 - 769304 virt-resize on RHEL 6 kernel fails to re-read the partition table
 - 755729 Error message for resize2fs-M needs tweaking
 - 701814 virt-win-reg fails on a libvirt guest that has no defined disk format: "format parameter is empty or contains disallowed characters"
 - 679737 libguestfs: improve error message when zerofree is not available in the appliance
 - 635971 glob mkfs ext2 /dev/vd[b-t]1 does not expand

New features¶

libguestfs

   - allow XFS filesystems to be created over an existing filesystem
     (Wanlong Gao)
   - the (unspecified) default alignment for part-disk has been
     changed to 64K for better support of high-end network-attached
     storage
   - new guestfs-testing(1) man page
   - list-filesystems returns MD devices containing filesystems
     (Matthew Booth)
   - support for GCC >= 4.7 (Jim Meyering)
   - check user does not add the same drive twice (Wanlong Gao).

language bindings

   - Experimental GObject bindings, with support for GObject
     Introspection.  You can now use libguestfs from Javascript.
     Please note these are not stable and final in this release.
     (Matthew Booth).
   - support for Ruby >= 1.9
   - Ruby bindings can be disabled individually (Hilko Bengen)
   - support for Python 2.6, 3.x (Richard Jones, Hilko Bengen)
   - support for PHP >= 5.4
   - new %guestfs_introspection hash is available in Perl bindings so
     you can query which optional arguments are available

inspection

   - guests with MD devices can be inspected (Matthew Booth)
   - support for GNU/Hurd guests

guestfish

   - libguestfs events (such as progress bar events and log messages) can
     be trapped and processed by user-defined shell scripts.
   - MD devices are tab-completed (Matthew Booth)

virt tools

   - New tool virt-format for erasing and making blank disks
   - virt-sparsify new --compress and -o options to allow for compressed
     and different format output
   - virt-sparsify can now detect and sparsify .vdi files
   - virt-sysprep no longer requires xmlstarlet; a new virt-inspector --xpath
     option has been added to replace this functionality
   - virt-rescue has a new --suggest option which suggests mount commands
     for the guest
   - virt-resize no longer requires OCaml pcre library

libguestfs live

   - daemon will no longer try to edit your live /etc/lvm configuration
   - fix a potential security problem with predictable /tmp names (Steve Kemp)

Security¶

  CVE-2011-4127, RHBZ#757071
  Mitigate possible privilege escalation via SG_IO ioctl
  For more information, see: https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs/commit/9a5f784d511a8f00a8386f316eab41fe660430db

New APIs¶

  blkid: print all attributes of a device known to blkid (Wanlong Gao)
  e2fsck: access to more features of e2fsck (Wanlong Gao)
  list-md-devices: list of Linux MD devices (Matthew Booth)
  md-create: create an MD device
  md-detail: returns metadata for an MD device (Matthew Booth)
  md-stop: stop an MD device (Wanlong Gao)
  tune2fs: allow ext2/3/4 filesystems to be tuned

Internals¶

  Git hosting has moved to http://github.com/libguestfs
  The various test directories have been rearranged logically, and now
  all appear under 'tests/'.
  There is a 'make extra-tests' rule which runs ordinary tests and
  additional tests, using valgrind to check for memory problems.
  Multiple memory leaks and other problems found by valgrind and fixed.
  Support for optional arguments in the generator has been rewritten
  to provide more features and safety (Matthew Booth).
  With gcc -fvisibility=hidden is used for internal symbols, avoiding
  call indirection via the PLT.
  RHashtable functions can be tested in the generator.
  ADD_ARG macro in daemon allows arg lists to be constructed without
  risk of stack smashing.
  Fix generation of OCaml functions that have more than 10 arguments.
  psmisc has been added to the appliance, allowing use of 'fuser',
  'killall' and 'pstree' for debugging.
  bindtests now cover RBufferOut and optional arguments (Matthew Booth).

Bugs fixed¶

 - 769680 temporary directories created during appliance builds are not cleaned up on error
 - 761460 guestfs_utimens hangs on named pipes
 - 761451 guestfs_utimens cannot set times on a directory
 - 760775 "guestfish: multi-boot operating systems are not supported by the -i option" should be more explanatory
 - 760669 guestfish copy-in and <! (inline execution) don't mix well: pclose: No child processes
 - 760000 libguestfs fails to compile with Ruby >= 1.9
 - 755729 Error message for resize2fs-M needs tweaking
 - 750889 Python code incompatible with Python v3.
 - 596761 Ctrl-\ causes guestfish to abort

New features¶

  Erlang bindings.
  virt-alignment-scan is a new tool to check the alignment of
  partitions within virtual machines or disk images.
  virt-sparsify is a new tool to make virtual machine disk images
  sparse.
  virt-sysprep is a new tool to make cloning guests from a template
  simpler.

guestfish

   - New commands setenv, unsetenv, to set environment variables.
   - The input file and line number is printed in error messages.
   - guestfish progress bars are now a "mini-library" used by other
     tools too.

guestmount

   - the --live option (for access to live VMs) now works.

virt-cat

   - virt-cat can now handle Windows paths and drive letters (RHBZ#693359).

virt-filesystems

   - the MBR partition type byte is displayed in --long output.

virt-make-fs

   - virt-make-fs now sets the MBR partition type byte correctly,
     improving compatibility with Windows (RHBZ#746295).

virt-resize

   - virt-resize can now work with guests using extended and logical
     partitions, in particular Ubuntu guests.
   - virt-resize can now align the first partition of Windows guests,
     improving performance.  The new virt-resize --align-first option
     controls this behaviour.
   - The virt-resize --machine-readable flag makes it possible to use
     virt-resize from other programs.
   - Partitions are now aligned to 128 sectors (usually 64K) by
     default.  This improves efficiency on high-end storage.  The new
     virt-resize --alignment option allows the alignment to be
     adjusted.

virt-win-reg

   - The syntax for deleting registry keys and values is documented
     in the man page (RHBZ#737944).

library

   - non-printing characters are escaped correctly in debug output.
   - GUESTFS_EVENT_ENTER is a new event type generated whenever a
     libguestfs function is called.
   - the library contains systemtap/DTrace probes.
   - the library can now be compiled without hivex (RHBZ#723474).

inspection

   - Improve detection of Windows disks.
   - Adds support for:
         ttylinux - a minimal Linux
         Mageia (thanks Michael Scherer)
         OpenSUSE and zypper (thanks Michael Scherer, Vincent Untz)
         Ubuntu logos (thanks Michael Scherer)
         NetBSD and pkgsrc (thanks Michael Scherer)
   - Handle some guest types that use /dev/root in /etc/fstab.
   - Fix handling of guests with > 26 disks (thanks Matthew Booth)
   - Add support for guests with HP Smart Array disks (thanks Matthew Booth)

febootstrap

   - FEBOOTSTRAP_KERNEL, FEBOOTSTRAP_MODULES environment variables can
     be set in order to choose which kernel to use for the appliance.

misc

   - ArchLinux support now working with Linux 3.0 (thanks Erik Nolte)
   - libvirt disks marked <readonly/> are now added readonly when
     using the virt-tools '-d' option.

Security¶

  (no security problems were found or fixed in this release)

New APIs¶

  compress-out, compress-device-out, copy-device-to-device,
  copy-device-to-file, copy-file-to-device, copy-file-to-file,
  get-smp, part-to-partnum, set-smp.
  The mount API no longer implicitly adds -o sync,noatime options.
  add-domain has a new 'readonlydisk' optional parameter to control
  how <readonly/> disks are handled.

Internals¶

 - Coverity was run on the source and more bugs were identified and
   fixed.
 - PCRE library is now required to build libguestfs.
 - APIC is now the default for the appliance.  You can also enable
   SMP support in the appliance.
 - OCaml bindings now correctly acquire GC lock during callbacks.
 - Out of tree builds should now work correctly (thanks Hilko Bengen).
 - ./configure --with-extra="..." can be used by packagers to set
   the extra version string.
 - zero, zero-device APIs: if the blocks already contain zeroes,
   don't write zeroes, so that we don't unnecessarily make the
   underlying storage non-sparse.
 - is-zero, is-zero-device APIs: optimize these so zero detection is
   faster.

Bugs fixed¶

 - 748266 libguestfs should detect versions of qemu which require -machine pc option
 - 747290 libguestfs ignores <readonly/> in libvirt XML
 - 747287 Misleading error message when permission denied opening a disk image
 - 746295 virt-make-fs doesn't set partition ID
 - 744795 guestmount --live is not usable
 - 737944 virt-win-reg hyphen (delete key) syntax may be wrong, and is not documented
 - 733297 ruby event handlers fail with "exception in callback: wrong argument type Proc (expected Data)"
 - 731744 libguestfs should escape special/non-printing characters in debug output
 - 729887 appliance crashes running aug_init with flags=4
 - 729075 libguestfs confuses Hp_recovery partition with Windows root filesystem
 - 727178 error: luks_open: cryptsetup: error while loading shared libraries: libfipscheck.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
 - 726739 libguestfs: error: aug_get: no matching node, trying to find hostname
 - 723474 If hivex and/or pcre not installed, libguestfs fails to compile
 - 693359 virt-cat and virt-edit don't handle case sensitive NTFS paths properly
 - 678231 virt-inspector reports unknown filesystem UUID
 - 671082 libguestfs does not work with kernel-rt
 - 666578 libguestfs: unknown filesystem label SWAP-sda2
 - 642821 virt-resize falls over on a disk image with a logical swap partition

New features¶

guestfish

   - guestfish strings can use escapes,
     eg. ><fs> write /foo "line 1\nline 2\n"
   - guestfish write-append command can be used to append to files.
   - Long-running file uploads and downloads can be cancelled through the
     API or by hitting ^C in guestfish.
   - New guestfish "display" command for displaying graphical files
     inside guests.
   - In guestfish, tab completion now works on /dev/mapper devices.

virt-inspector

   - Inspection API can get an icon or logo for certain guests.
   - virt-inspector includes the logo and hostname for certain guests.
   - virt-inspector can now get the version and release numbers for RPM
     packages.
   - CentOS and Scientific Linux are now treated as separate distros by
     the inspection API.

virt-resize

   - virt-resize can now handle btrfs.
   - New virt-resize --ntfsresize-force option allows Windows VMs to be
     resized multiple times.

other virt tools

   - guestfish, guestmount, virt-cat, virt-df, virt-edit, virt-filesystems,
     virt-inspector, virt-ls and virt-rescue now allow you to use
     "-d UUID" option to specify a guest by UUID.  This makes them more
     robust to use from other programs.
   - virt-ls -lR option allows complex file iteration and guest analysis.
   - virt-win-reg supports HKEY_USERS\<SID> and HKEY_USERS\<username>.
   - virt-win-reg new option --unsafe-printable-strings allows printable
     strings to be displayed in the output (unsafely: read the documentation
     before using).
   - virt-edit has been rewritten in C.

API and language bindings

   - Java is now completely supported.
     See http://libguestfs.org/guestfs-java.3.html
   - JRuby is supported via the Java bindings.
   - guestfs_close now appears in trace messages.
   - Python binding adds explicit g.close() method.
   - Python programs can now use the new event API.
   - Python GIL is released during libguestfs calls, allowing multithreaded
     Python programs to work properly.
   - 9pfs (Plan 9 filesystems exported from the host) are now supported.
   - Add -DGUESTFS_WARN_DEPRECATED=1 to warn about use of deprecated API
     functions in C programs.
   - New manual page guestfs-recipes(1) with recipes.
   - mkfs-opts can now set inode size and sector size on created filesystems
     (thanks Nikita Menkovich).
   - guestfs_last_errno is now accessible from OCaml (as g#last_errno ()).

Security¶

 - optargs_bitmask is checked even for calls that have no optional
   arguments.  This closes a possible exploit in the daemon from
   untrusted callers.

New APIs¶

  btrfs-filesystem-resize, get-pgroup, inspect-get-icon, is-zero,
  is-zero-device, list-9p, list-dm-devices, mount-9p, ntfsresize-opts,
  set-pgroup, write-append

Internals¶

 - Coverity (a static analysis tool) was run across the codebase and
   many fixes were made.
 - Generator can handle functions that return RBufferOut and have
   optional arguments.
 - Compatible with Perl 5.14.
 - Compatible with gcc 4.6.
 - Perform safety checks on QEMU.
 - C API tests can now fully test calls that have optional arguments.
 - Use ./configure --enable-install-daemon to install /usr/sbin/guestfsd.
 - po-docs directory now covers all man pages.
 - stderr from qemu process is now captured by the event subsystem.

Bugs fixed¶

 - 602997 part-get-bootable gives wrong result with an unordered part layout
 - 661280 virt-rescue: panic when shutting down: "/sbin/reboot: No such file or directory"
 - 700369 qemu-system-x86_64 says 'KVM not supported for this target'
 - 705200 guestmount attempt results in access denied
 - 714981 'list-filesystems' does not know about virtio 9p filesystems or detect existing mounts
 - 717786 libguestfs python bindings should have an explicit close call
 - 721275 virt-resize in F16 should support btrfs

New features¶

 - libguestfs and tools can be used against live virtual machines.
   See the 'guestfish --live' and 'guestmount --live' options, and (for
   the low-level interface) the new APIs set-attach-method and
   get-attach-method.
 - New virt tools:
   virt-copy-in, virt-copy-out, virt-tar-in, virt-tar-out.
 - libguestfs can get the drive letter mappings for Windows guests.
 - virt-inspector displays drive letter mappings for Windows guests.
 - Drive letters can now be used in virt-edit and guestfish programs
   when operating on Windows guests.
 - virt-resize now works on 32 bit hosts.
 - You can now inspect the install disks and live CDs of many different
   operating systems.
 - guestfish <! cmd which executes a shell cmd and inlines the result.
 - guestfish, guestmount, virt-rescue now all support --ro and --rw
   options, and the default for this can be chosen via a configuration
   file (/etc/libguestfs-tools.conf).
 - New event API allows more than one callback to be registered for
   each event, makes it possible to call the API from other languages,
   and allows nearly all log, debug and trace messages to be rerouted
   from stderr.
 - Greater FHS compliance for temporary files, including using /var/tmp
   for large cached files that should survive reboot (instead of /tmp).
 - guestfish, guestmount -m option allows mount options to be passed
   through to the underlying filesystem.
 - mkfs-opts allows filesystem features to be specified.
 - More intelligent handling of mountpoints, allowing mkmountpoint, mount
   and umount-all commands to work together properly.
 - Trace messages are prefixed with a distinct string, allowing them to
   be easily 'grepped' out from debug output.
 - guestfs_launch (guestfish 'run' command) now produces progress
   messages (a guestfish progress bar) if it takes longer than 5
   seconds to run.
 - Several long-running commands where we are unable to estimate time
   to completion generate "pulse mode" progress events.  Progress bar
   in guestfish has been updated to display these.
 - Publish new example code in: C, Perl, Python, OCaml, Ruby.
 - New virt-dhcp-address example program.
 - The Java and Ruby bindings have been improved greatly.
 - Perl includes a way to get the errno of the last error.
 - Python bindings now compatible with rpyc (thanks Erez Shinan).
 - Transifex is now being used to manage translations.
   http://www.transifex.net/projects/p/libguestfs/
 - Inspection now supports Red Hat Desktop, Slackware distributions.
 - Inspection no longer fails for Windows guests that have two or
   more disks.
 - Inspection can now tell the difference between Windows 2008 Server
   and Windows 7.
 - Inspection can detect 32 bit applications installed in 64 bit
   Windows, running on the WOW64 emulator.
 - A series of protocol fixes has fixed the old bug RHBZ#576879
   which used to cause errors during the upload command to lose
   protocol synchronization.
 - New logo!

Security¶

  [none]

New APIs¶

  first-private, get-attach-method, inspect-get-drive-mappings,
  inspect-get-product-variant,
  inspect-get-windows-current-control-set, next-private, resize2fs-M,
  set-attach-method.

Internals¶

 - The 'HACKING' file is obsolete.  The contents have been moved into
   a section of the guestfs(3) manual page.
 - libguestfs-test-tool simplified.  It no longer needs the static
   binary or tries to construct an ISO.
 - rpcgen-generated files are compiled with -fno-strict-aliasing
   which should be safer (thanks Matt Booth).
 - virt-resize was rewritten in OCaml.
 - guestfish and other tools tested with valgrind; some memory leaks
   were fixed.

Bugs fixed¶

 - 502533 Updated Polish translation of libguestfs
 - 576879 libguestfs protocol loses synchronization if you 'upload' before mounting disks
 - 599503 document that mkmountpoint and umount-all cannot be mixed
 - 617440 guestfish: fails to tilde expand '~' when the $HOME env is unset
 - 664558 RFE: Allow to set log callback in Ruby bindings
 - 665358 Punjabi Translation Completed (pa_IN)
 - 666577 libguestfs: unknown filesystem /dev/fd0
 - 667610 Multiple bugs, memory leaks in libguestfs ruby bindings
 - 668112 virt-filesystems command fails on guest with corrupt filesystem label
 - 668574 guestfish -i is trying to mount all mounts from /etc/fstab and fails with an error when device doesn't exists
 - 673479 Add a grep-friendly string to LIBGUESTFS_TRACE output
 - 674130 Inspection code fails for Windows guest with two disks
 - 682756 libguestfs trace segfaults when list-filesystems returns error
 - 682979 libguestfs incorrectly detects Red Hat desktop as 'redhat-based' instead of 'redhat'
 - 690819 mkfs fails creating a filesystem on a disk device when using a disk with 'ide' interface
 - 691389 Extended attributes don't work over guestmount (FUSE)
 - 691724 virt-inspector reports unknown filesystem /dev/vda1
 - 692545 inspect-list-applications fails to detect 32 bit apps installed under WOW64 emulator on 64 bit Windows
 - 693324 sfdisk's python interface only accepts lists of type 'list' for the lines parameter

New features¶

 - Support and packages for Debian and Ubuntu.
 - Daily builds from git repository on Debian and Ubuntu to reduce risk
   of regressions.
 - Port to ArchLinux 'pacman' (thanks Thomas S Hatch).
 - 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.
 - Functions can now have optional parameters.
 - Progress bars and progress notifications can now happen for upload
   commands.
 - Appliance builder more careful about not leaving temporary files
   around in /tmp.
 - getfattr/setfattr commands added to virt-rescue.
 - ROADMAP file covers roadmap and goals for future releases.

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.
 - FUSE calls into guestmount are now traced when using guestmount -x.

New APIs¶

 - add-domain
 - add-drive-opts
 - getxattr
 - inspect-get-hostname
 - inspect-get-package-format
 - inspect-get-package-management
 - inspect-get-roots
 - inspect-list-applications
 - lgetxattr
 - mkfs-opts

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).
 - New C API test type 'InitScratchFS' makes the tests run a little
   more quickly.
 - Excluded packages in the appliance are now listed in a separate
   file appliance/excludelist.in, and can be customized per-distro.

Bugs fixed¶

 - 663407 readlink and readlinklist returns /sysroot/ in some paths
 - 661280 virt-rescue: panic when shutting down: "/sbin/reboot: No such file or directory"
 - 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

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

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