libguestfs is a library for accessing and modifying virtual machine
disk images. I'm pleased to announce the latest stable version. The
release notes are below and you can download this version from the
download directory here:
https://download.libguestfs.org/
Rich.
RELEASE NOTES FOR LIBGUESTFS 1.46
(https://libguestfs.org/guestfs-release-notes-1.46.1.html)
The big news in this release is that the virt tools like
virt-builder(1), virt-cat(1), virt-customize(1), virt-df(1), and many
more were moved to a new project. The temporary repository for the new
guestfs-tools project is here:
https://github.com/rwmjones/guestfs-tools while we set up a permanent
home for it on gitlab. The tarballs containing the tools are here:
https://download.libguestfs.org/guestfs-tools/
Spinning out all of the tools into a new repository has made libguestfs
a bit easier and simpler to build and manage, and allows us to focus on
just being the API.
Note that the tools guestfish(1) (which is really a "shell
API"),
guestmount(1), libguestfs-test-tool(1) and virt-rescue(1) are still
part of the libguestfs repo.
The not quite so big news is that we have moved away from FreeNode to
Libera Chat for IRC. The new channel on Libera is called
"#guestfs"
(thanks Daniel Berrang?).
Language bindings
Libguestfs is now compatible with Go 1.16, and defines a Go module
(thanks Gianfranco Costamagna).
Memory leaks in Python APIs that returned structs are fixed (thanks
??).
Python PyPi code has been relicensed to LGPLv2+ (from GPLv2+).
Inspection
Inspection of RPM guests now uses librpm instead of trying to parse the
Berkeley DB directly. Since most RPM-based guests have replaced BDB
with sqlite this allows us to read these newer guests while retaining
compatibility with the older guests (thanks Panu Matilainen).
Inspection of RHEL 8+ with split /usr configuration has been made more
reliable.
Inspection of Windows Server 2022 should now work correctly (Yongkui
Guo).
API
New APIs
No new APIs were added in libguestfs 1.46.
Other API changes
The output of the "guestfs_cap_get_file" API has changed
slightly
because of changes in the underlying libcap. This isn't strictly
speaking an API break because the new output is a still valid but more
compact description of file capabilities, but because it is different
it may cause problems for users of the API.
The "guestfs_mkfs_btrfs" API now ignores the
"allocstart" parameter
since it was deprecated by btrfs 4.14.1 and later removed.
"guestfs_isoinfo_*" APIs now directly parse the CD Primary
Volume
Descriptor instead of using an external tool. The APIs should appear
to work exactly the same (thanks Thomas Schmitt).
You can now force the appliance to use KVM or fail if not supported
(Sam Eiderman).
Because of a change to XFS in version 5, disabling lazy-counters no
longer works. The API still works for earlier versions of XFS (Laszlo
Ersek).
Build changes
The build now uses and requires PCRE2 (instead of PCRE).
This version requires libvirt ? 7.1.0, if libvirt is enabled.
gnulib is no longer bundled with libguestfs, making builds from git
much simpler.
Perl "Sys::Virt" (libvirt bindings for Perl) are no longer
required by
libguestfs.
The code has been compiled with both LTO and GCC -fanalyzer and many
bugs and warnings fixed.
Allow projects like guestfs-tools and virt-v2v to be compiled with
locally built (but not installed) libguestfs (Laszlo Ersek).
Tests now run in parallel (many additional fixes by Laszlo Ersek).
Work around RAID0 regression in Linux 3.14/5.4 (Laszlo Ersek).
Support for RISC-V (Heinrich Schuchardt).
Support for building on Alma and Cloud Linux (????????? ?????????).
Fix to compile with OCaml 4.12.
The tarball no longer includes the ChangeLog file. To get a detailed
changelog, please look at the upstream git repository.
Don't assume bash in the ./configure script (Martin Kletzander).
Fix ./configure --with-distro option (Alexandre Iooss).
Various fixes for qemu 6.1.
Fix creating appliance dependencies on Debian (Hilko Bengen).
Update appliance packages on SUSE and several other improvements to the
init script (Olaf Hering).
Internals
We now use the qemu / libvirt feature -cpu max to select the best CPU
to run the appliance. This should improve performance for things like
encrypted disks (Daniel Berrang?).
When passing the appliance filesystem UUID to supermin we now read it
directly out of the appliance instead of using the file(1) program.
This is more reliable, especially as file often breaks or changed its
output.
The qemu -enable-fips option is no longer used. It was not needed and
has been deprecated by qemu.
On Fedora, pull in glibc-gconv-extra to fix the
"guestfs_syslinux" API
(Yongkui Guo).
We no longer use qemu's sga (Serial Graphics Adapter) option ROM,
instead using the equivalent seabios feature.
Bugs fixed
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/2002325
Use -machine graphics=off instead of sga device
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/2001636
[RFE] libguestfs: Add detection of AlmaLinux and CloudLinux
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1997446
osinfo is not correct when handling windows server 2022 image
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1990720
syslinux: failed to create ldlinux.sys
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1985912
The lstatns function has a memory leak. (python3)
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1960217
[Regression] ls: cannot read symbolic link after running guestmount
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1949683
virt-v2v: error: inspection could not detect the source guest (or
physical machine)
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1938982
Move libguestfs from PCRE to PCRE2
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1930996
[Regression] lvcreate fails to wipe signatures again
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1930133
Virt-v2v can't convert rhel8 guest whose usr partition is
independent
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1915646
libguestfs-1.44.0 - guestfs appliance path broken
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1911177
virt-builder + virt-install creates a VM that cannot boot fedora 33
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1766487
libguestfs assumes rpmdb is in Berkeley DB format
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1409024
[Debian] Missing db_dump abort inspection
AUTHORS
Alexandre Iooss
Daniel P. Berrang?
Heinrich Schuchardt
Hilko Bengen
Laszlo Ersek
Martin Kletzander
Remi Collet
Richard W.M. Jones
Sam Eiderman
--
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
Read my programming and virtualization blog: http://rwmj.wordpress.com
virt-builder quickly builds VMs from scratch
http://libguestfs.org/virt-builder.1.html