=head1 NAME

guestfs-release-notes - libguestfs Release Notes

=head1 RELEASE NOTES FOR LIBGUESTFS 1.14

These release notes only cover the differences from the previous
stable/dev branch split (1.12.0).  For detailed changelogs, please see
the git repository, or the ChangeLog file distributed in the tarball.

=head2 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.

=head3 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.

=head3 guestmount

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

=head3 virt-cat

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

=head3 virt-filesystems

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

=head3 virt-make-fs

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

=head3 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.

=head3 virt-win-reg

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

=head3 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).

=head3 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)

=head3 febootstrap

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

=head3 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.

=head2 Security

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

=head2 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.

=head2 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.

=head2 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

=head1 SEE ALSO

L<guestfs-examples(1)>,
L<guestfs-faq(1)>,
L<guestfs-performance(1)>,
L<guestfs-recipes(1)>,
L<guestfs-testing(1)>,
L<guestfs(3)>,
L<guestfish(1)>,
L<http://libguestfs.org/>

=head1 AUTHOR

Richard W.M. Jones

=head1 COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) 2009-2025 Red Hat Inc.