Re: [Libguestfs] Hivex licensing question
by Richard W.M. Jones
On Fri, Nov 26, 2010 at 10:03:05AM -0800, Yandell, Henri wrote:
> We’re looking into using Hivex and came across something odd. While
> the license of hivex.c is LGPL 2.1, it appears to require the GPL
> 3.0 licensed gnulib package for a few minor functions ( full_read,
> full_write and c_toupper ). There are also a few GPL 3.0 build
> files.
It has always been our intention to allow hivex to be used from both
proprietary and free software, and so the library should be LGPLv2+.
The standalone programs are GPLv2+, but this should not be a problem
because you wouldn't link software to them.
I have looked at the gnulib modules that we're using in the library
(ie. lib/*) and they are:
hivex c-ctype LGPLv2+
hivex full-read LGPL
hivex full-write LGPL
(according to .gnulib/modules/* License field which is what you should
look at, *not* the comments at the top of each gnulib source file
bizarrely).
Therefore I think for the library we are OK.
Just to complete the analysis, for the programs we are using:
hivexsh c-ctype LGPLv2+
hivexsh xstrtol GPL
The Makefiles are GPL, but they don't affect the library or the
programs in any way. They constitute a separate program used to build
the software.
Rich.
CC'd to Jim: This analysis is a pain, and gnulib-tool doesn't let you
say "I want to use LGPL for this directory and GPL for this other
directory".
--
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
14 years
[RHEL 6.1] libguestfs test packages available
by Richard W.M. Jones
libguestfs 1.6 will be the basis for RHEL 6.1. If you are using RHEL 6.0,
thanks for supporting Red Hat, and if you want to try out the new
version, then I have built some packages here:
http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/rhel6.1-libguestfs-preview/
These are built on RHEL 6.0 and should install directly on top of RHEL 6.0.
Some highlights:
- Based on the upstream stable 1.6 branch.
- Much better performance.
- Many new features, see: http://libguestfs.org/RELEASE-NOTES.txt
- virt-inspector is the RHEL 6.0 virt-inspector (deprecated upstream)
- virt-inspector2 is the new upstream virt-inspector
They should be completely source and binary compatible with the RHEL
6.0 packages, except for new features. So a program or script that
you wrote against libguestfs 1.2.7 in RHEL 6.0 should work unchanged
against these new packages.
Note these packages are not official or supported by Red Hat. If you
have any problems please post about it on the libguestfs mailing list:
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/libguestfs
Rich.
PS. The specifics are that we'll move to these versions in RHEL 6.1:
- libguestfs 1.6.x, x >= 2, and backports
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=613593
- hivex 1.2.x, x >= 3
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=642631
- febootstrap 2.10
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=628849
--
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
libguestfs lets you edit virtual machines. Supports shell scripting,
bindings from many languages. http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/libguestfs/
See what it can do: http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/libguestfs/recipes.html
14 years
Mac OS X configure requires (de|fe)bootstrap
by Mitchell Hashimoto
Hello,
I'd like to get libguestfs to compile on Mac OS X and I've been
chugging along quite well. I recently hit an issue in the
"./configure" which I don't thin is solvable on Mac without modifying
libguestfs autotools scripts but I can easily be wrong:
checking for febootstrap... no
checking for debootstrap... no
configure: error: Either febootstrap or debootstrap must be installed
What should I do about this to continue the configuration?
Thanks,
Mitchell
14 years
Re: [Libguestfs] libguestfs-1.6 on RHEL5.5 Server
by Richard W.M. Jones
On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 04:55:30PM +0000, mk wrote:
> Currently, I use
>
> - v.1.6 on Fedora 13 (no prob., have support for all groups of
> functionality)
>
> - v.1.2.14 on RHEL 5.5, installed from EPEL
> (libguestfs-1.2.14-1.el5.x86_64.rpm). However, when I test it,
> $h->available (\@groups) fails for every available group.
Little bit surprising ... What does this command say:
guestfish -a /dev/null run : available "lvm2" && echo this is available
On my CentOS 5.5 x86-64 host it says that lvm2 is available, which it
should be under every circumstance on a Linux host.
> Is anywhere a build with support for all of them?
It's not possible to build libguestfs on RHEL 5 with support for
everything. Some external programs simply don't exist. Might be
better to start with the question: what features do you need that are
missing?
[Please send replies to the list]
Rich.
--
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
libguestfs lets you edit virtual machines. Supports shell scripting,
bindings from many languages. http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/libguestfs/
See what it can do: http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/libguestfs/recipes.html
14 years
[PATCH 0/7] Add libvirt domain to core API
by Richard W.M. Jones
This series of patches aim to make adding disks from libvirt domains
easy through the core API.
These two new APIs allow you to add the disks from a libvirt domain.
The higher level add-domain API takes the name of the libvirt domain
as a string and connects to libvirt itself. The lower level
add-libvirt-dom API relies on the program to connect to libvirt and
pass the virDomainPtr into the API call.
int guestfs_add_domain (guestfs_h *g, const char *dom, ...);
int guestfs_add_libvirt_dom (guestfs_h *g, virDomainPtr dom, ...);
In guestfish you can use the 'domain' command to access the higher
level API, eg:
><fs> domain Fedora14 libvirturi:qemu:///system
1
(The returned number is the number of disks that were added.)
Since it would be impossible for the user to create a virDomainPtr
inside guestfish, the lower-level API is not exposed.
The 'guestfish -d' option is reimplemented to use this new API,
simplifying guestfish (and guestmount) and meaning that these programs
no longer directly depend on libvirt or libxml2.
As well as that I wanted libvirt and libxml2 to be optional
dependencies. Distro packagers shouldn't need them in order to
compile libguestfs. So I took the opportunity to make those optional,
and at the same time to make pcre, libmagic and hivex optional. Of
course if you don't have those dependencies then certain core API
features are disabled.
Rich.
--
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
New in Fedora 11: Fedora Windows cross-compiler. Compile Windows
programs, test, and build Windows installers. Over 70 libraries supprt'd
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/MinGW http://www.annexia.org/fedora_mingw
14 years
Debian based appliance
by Guido Günther
Hi,
just a short heads up about the current status of libguestfs on Debian:
Current git master builds and works fine on Debian sid. The only change
you have to make is to use a custom kernel instead of the one in
squeeze/sid by pointing DEBIRF_KERNEL_PACKAGE in
appliance/debian/debirf.conf to something recent enough (>= 2.6.35)
like:
DEBIRF_KERNEL_PACKAGE=/foo/linux-image-2.6.36-rc7+_2.6.36-rc7+-20_i386.deb
Otherwise libguesfsd quits early since the virtio-serial device won't be
created in the guest.
Cheers,
-- Guido
14 years
[PATCH] fish: Add --rw option (does nothing yet).
by Richard W.M. Jones
This patch is meant for discussion of the issues involved.
I'd like to change the default for guestfish -a / -m command line
options to open read-only. This creates less opportunity to corrupt
disk images by opening them for write while another VM might be using
them.
With this patch you can specify:
guestfish --rw ...
which in itself does nothing since the default is currently read/write
anyway.
But it allows us in future to add a configuration file that controls
the default ("default" being the case where you use guestfish or
guestmount with neither --ro nor --rw options). We can then change
the configuration file in 1.8 to make read-only the default.
By backporting this patch to the other stable branches we can start
introducing scripts that use 'guestfish --rw' in readiness for a
future change to the default.
Rich.
--
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
libguestfs lets you edit virtual machines. Supports shell scripting,
bindings from many languages. http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/libguestfs/
See what it can do: http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/libguestfs/recipes.html
14 years
