libguestfs/docs/guestfs-release-notes-1.22.pod

=head1 NAME

guestfs-release-notes - libguestfs Release Notes

=head1 RELEASE NOTES FOR LIBGUESTFS 1.22

These release notes only cover the differences from the previous
stable/dev branch split (1.20.0).  For detailed changelogs, please see
the git repository, or the ChangeLog file distributed in the tarball.

=head2 New features

=head3 API

Remote access to disks:

=over 4

=item *

Network Block Device (nbd)

=item *

Secure Shell (ssh)

=item *

HTTP and HTTPS

=item *

FTP and FTPS

=item *

iSCSI

=item *

Gluster

=item *

Ceph/rbd
(Mike Kelly)

=item *

Sheepdog

=item *

TFTP

=back

The SYSLINUX and EXTLINUX bootloaders can now be installed in disk
images using the API.

Inspection can now handle filesystems such as btrfs where subvolumes
are separately mountable (Matthew Booth).

"Attach methods" are now known as "backends".  Compatibility with
existing code is preserved.

Filenames can contain ':', as long as newer QEMU is being used.

=head3 Tools

Virt-alignment-scan and virt-df scan multiple guests in parallel.

Guestmount now passes errno accurately back to userspace in almost
all cases.

Guestfish and other tools can now use a URI-like syntax to access
remote disks, eg:

 guestfish -a ssh://example.com/path/to/disk.img

Guestfish and guestmount now allow you to specify the filesystem type
when mounting, which is more secure (Dave Vasilevsky).

Guestfish is now the "guest filesystem shell".

Guestfish allows only C<1> C<true> C<t> C<yes> C<y> C<on> C<0>
C<false> C<f> C<no> C<n> C<off> for boolean values (case insensitive),
and gives an error for all other strings.

New tool C<guestunmount> for unmounting FUSE filesystems safely.

C<guestmount --no-fork> flag prevents guestmount from daemonizing.

Virt-resize now uses sparse copies by default, saving considerable
space for guests which are mostly empty.

Bash tab completion has been rewritten and can now handle most tools,
and correctly tab-complete C<--long> options.  In addition, bash
completion scripts are loaded on demand.

=head3 Language bindings

The Java API now supports events.

The Python object now inherits from the C<object> base class.

Python methods which previously returned lists of tuples can now
be made to return a Python dict.  For backwards compatibility, you
have to enable this by using the constructor option
S<C<guestfs.GuestFS (python_return_dict=True)>>.

The PHP bindings are now tested properly, and have had multiple fixes.

The long-deprecated Perl C<Sys::Guestfs::Lib> library has been
removed.
L<https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2013-April/msg00001.html>

=head3 Examples

New example program showing how to enable debugging and capture
log messages.

=head3 Other

Distributors can add arbitrary extra packages to the appliance by
doing:

 ./configure --with-extra-packages="list of package names"

Distributors can use:

 ./configure --with-supermin-extra-options="..."

to add arbitrary extra options to supermin.

=head2 Security

No security issues were found in this release.

=head2 New APIs

 cp-r
 extlinux
 feature-available
 get-program
 is-whole-device
 part-get-gpt-type
 part-set-gpt-type
 rename
 set-program
 syslinux

C only:

 guestfs_event_to_string

=head2 Internals

The febootstrap tool has now been renamed to "supermin".  Libguestfs
can use either, but now prefers "supermin".
L<http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/supermin/>

libxml2 is required to build libguestfs.

The hivexregedit program (from hivex) is required to build from git.

Internal functions can no longer be used unless the caller defines
C<-DGUESTFS_PRIVATE=1>.

Enable C compiler warnings in Python, Ruby bindings.

Fail early and clearly if libvirt does not support qemu/KVM (eg. if
default libvirt connection is to Xen).

C<make print-subdirs> rule, useful for selectively running tests.

Multiple fixes to allow separated (sourcedir != builddir) builds.

Multiple fixes to Haskell bindings.

C<ln> and C<ln-f> APIs now capture C<errno> correctly.

Language binding tests use (mostly) a standard numbering scheme and
aim to test the same range of features in each language.  Also the
number of launches required has been reduced so these tests should run
much more quickly.

Library code internally uses GCC C<__attribute__((cleanup))> (if
available) to simplify memory allocation.

Internal header files have been reorganized.  See the comments in
F<src/guestfs-internal*.h>

Internal code shared between the library and certain tools is now
located in a static C<libutils> library.

Almost all subdirectories can now use parallel builds, although note
that the top-level directories still build in series.

Use of C<PATH_MAX> and C<NAME_MAX> has been eliminated from the code.

The Java API now requires JVM E<ge> 1.6.

Force use of C<serial-tests> with automake E<ge> 1.12.

Use of sockets in the library protocol layer is abstracted, allowing
other non-POSIX layers to be added in future (see
F<src/conn-socket.c>).

C<qemu-img info --output json> is used if available, for more secure
parsing of the output of this command.

Distros can now use C<make INSTALLDIRS=vendor install> to place Ruby
bindings in vendordir.  This eliminates a non-upstream patch carried
by both Fedora and Debian.

Valgrind log files are now written to F<tmp/valgrind-I<DATE>-I<PID>.log>

C<make clean> cleans the local C<tmp/> directory.

The C API tests have been rewritten using a more flexible generator
language that allows arbitrary C code to be executing during tests.

=head2 Bugs fixed

=begin comment

./bugs-in-changelog.sh 1.20.0..

=end comment

=over 4

=item L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/961812>

Segfault in inspect-fs.c in mountable code

=item L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/957772>

tar-out and base64-out quoting error

=item L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/957380>

libguestfs: error: btrfsvol:/dev/sda2/root: root device not found: only call this function with a root device previously returned by guestfs_inspect_os

=item L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/948324>

inspection fails if libosinfo is not installed

=item L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/928995>

file on zero-sized file now produces "empty " instead of "empty"

=item L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/921292>

qemu: could not open disk image /tmp/.../snapshot1: Permission denied

=item L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/921040>

"error: external command failed, see earlier error messages" message needs to change

=item L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/920225>

libguestfs should use --output json (if supported) to safely parse the output of qemu-img command

=item L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/916780>

feature request: guestmount --with-cleanup-pipefd

=item L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/914934>

oom-killer kills guestfsd when tar-in a lot of data

=item L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/914931>

FileIn commands cause segfault if appliance dies during the file copy in

=item L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/913145>

Misc leaks in virNetClientProgramCall in libvirt 1.0.2

=item L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/912499>

Security context on image file gets reset

=item L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/909836>

libguestfs-test-tool --qemu segfaults

=item L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/909624>

Unexpected non-tail recursion in recv_from_daemon results in stack overflow in very long-running API calls that send progress messages

=item L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/908322>

virt-tar fails on non-existent directory names "error in chunked encoding at /home/rjones/d/libguestfs/tools/virt-tar line 272."

=item L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/908321>

virt-cat fails on directory names "/dev/stdout: error in chunked encoding"

=item L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/907554>

btrfs causes subsequent ntfs-3g filesystem to fail

=item L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/905341>

"No such file or directory" when execute "hivex-commit"

=item L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/903620>

btrfs_subvolume_list broken due to change in subvolume list output

=item L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/895910>

guestmount: rename() incorrectly follows symbolic links

=item L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/895905>

guestmount: link() incorrectly returns ENOENT, when it should be EXDEV

=item L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/895904>

checksums-out fail to compute the checksums of all regular files in directory

=item L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/894545>

libguestfs FTBFS on Fedora 19 because of new ruby

=item L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/890027>

virt-sysprep: Setting hostname, domain name and pretty name on Fedora 18 correctly

=item L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/887971>

pvcreate fails if partition contains a swap signature

=item L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/887520>

zero_free_space: open: /sysroot//ujqqq135.rd3: Cannot allocate memory

=item L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/886915>

libguestfs with libvirt attach-method fails with odd error if default hypervisor is Xen

=item L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/847549>

Adding a zero-length virtio-scsi disk causes: qemu-kvm: hw/scsi-bus.c:1568: scsi_req_complete: Assertion `req->status == -1' failed.

=item L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/811649>

libguestfs cannot open disk images which are symlinks to files that contain ':' (colon) character

=item L<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/664558>

RFE: Allow to set log callback in Ruby bindings

=back

=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.