David,

Better late than never ...  I have fixed all the problems with the
Ubuntu 10.04 LTS build, and libguestfs works and passes the testsuite.

There were several problems stopping this.  As you diagnosed,
'apt-cache depends --recurse' is simply broken in this version of
Ubuntu.  I first tried to backport the newer version, but it has far
too many dependencies that would also have to be updated.  Instead I
pushed a workaround into febootstrap:

http://git.annexia.org/?p=febootstrap.git;a=commitdiff;h=e4c7daf8bcdcf094719b3169ed79aece64a933bd
http://git.annexia.org/?p=febootstrap.git;a=commitdiff;h=72101b100aa33b0b9879f9b18edfdd88c1aa2755
http://git.annexia.org/?p=febootstrap.git;a=commitdiff;h=3ac623701e5fe5ce94b22b4f40f72ee0161d5184

Also, as you were very close to diagnosing, there were a few problems
with the appliance init script.  This version of Ubuntu does not
create a /sys directory, so mounting /sys failed, and that caused a
cascade of other failures.  The fix is simple:

http://git.annexia.org/?p=libguestfs.git;a=commitdiff;h=5b012024c49672cc69635ff01f9b9e4f87de1c65

Ubuntu has an old version of gettext, so you need to apply a patch to
po/Makefile.in.in (patch not upstream, attached).

udev is too old.  Even with fixed udev rules for creating
virtio-serial ports, the symlinks aren't being created.  Instead of
trying to work out why this was, I just hacked the daemon to look for
the port directly (patch not upstream, attached).

Those were the code changes.

I also had to manually backport and build the following packages from
oneiric:

- hivex_1.2.7-1build1 [not strictly required]
- qemu-kvm_0.14.1+noroms-0ubuntu3
- vgabios_0.6c-2ubuntu3

I also had to install linux-image-2.6.38-10-server from lucid-updates,
and fix the broken permissions, see
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/759725 .

With all that lot, it works and passes the test suite.

I'm going to put some proper instructions and sources and binaries on
the website later.

Rich.

--
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
virt-df lists disk usage of guests without needing to install any
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http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-df/