4:10 p.m.
I'm happy to announce that after 5 months of development, the new
stable version of libguestfs is available. libguestfs is a set of
tools and a library for accessing, creating and modifying the contents
of virtual machines and disk images.
Home page: http://libguestfs.org/
Binary packages for:
Fedora: http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/packageinfo?packageID=8391
(available within 24 hours)
Debian: http://libguestfs.org/download/binaries/debian-packages/
(coming in 1-2 days)
Ubuntu: http://libguestfs.org/download/binaries/ubuntu-packages/
(coming in 1-2 days)
The new stable 1.10.0 version brings many enhancements. The full
release notes are attached below, or you can read them on the website
at http://libguestfs.org/RELEASE-NOTES.txt
Release notes for libguestfs 1.10.0
-----------------------------------
These release notes only cover the differences from the previous
stable/dev branch split (1.8.0). For detailed changelogs, please see
the git repository, or the ChangeLog file distributed in the tarball.
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 filesytem 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
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