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124 lines
4.1 KiB
Plaintext
124 lines
4.1 KiB
Plaintext
Libguestfs is a library for accessing and modifying guest disk images.
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Amongst the things this is good for: making batch configuration
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changes to guests, getting disk used/free statistics (see also:
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virt-df), migrating between virtualization systems (see also:
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virt-p2v), performing partial backups, performing partial guest
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clones, cloning guests and changing registry/UUID/hostname info, and
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much else besides.
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Libguestfs uses Linux kernel and qemu code, and can access any type of
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guest filesystem that Linux and qemu can, including but not limited
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to: ext2/3/4, btrfs, FAT and NTFS, LVM, many different disk partition
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schemes, qcow, qcow2, vmdk.
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Libguestfs provides ways to enumerate guest storage (eg. partitions,
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LVs, what filesystem is in each LV, etc.). It can also run commands
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in the context of the guest. Also you can access filesystems over FTP.
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Libguestfs is a library that can be linked with C and C++ management
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programs (or management programs written in OCaml, Perl or Python).
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You can also use it from shell scripts or the command line.
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Libguestfs was written by Richard W.M. Jones (rjones@redhat.com).
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For discussion please use the fedora-virt mailing list:
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https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-virt
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Requirements
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
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- recent QEMU with vmchannel support
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- febootstrap >= 1.5
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- XDR, rpcgen
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- Augeas (http://augeas.net/)
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- perldoc (pod2man, pod2text) to generate the manual pages and
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other documentation.
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- (Optional) Readline to have nicer command-line editing in guestfish.
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- (Optional) OCaml if you want to rebuild the generated files, and
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also to build the OCaml bindings
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- (Optional) local Fedora mirror
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- (Optional) Perl if you want to build the perl bindings
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- (Optional) Python if you want to build the python bindings
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Running ./configure will check you have all the requirements installed
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on your machine.
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Building
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
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Then make the daemon, library and root filesystem:
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./configure [--with-mirror=URI]
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make
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Use the optional --with-mirror parameter to specify the URI of a local
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Fedora mirror. See the discussion of the MIRROR parameter in the
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febootstrap(8) manpage.
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Finally run the tests:
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make check
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If everything works, you can install the library and tools by running
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these commands as root:
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make install
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Notes on cross-architecture support
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
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At the moment we basically don't support cross-architecture or
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32-on-64. This limits what is possible for some guests. Filesystem
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operations and FTP export will work fine, but running commands in
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guests may not be possible.
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To enable this requires work for cross-architecture and 32-on-64
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support in febootstrap, fakeroot and fakechroot.
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The daemon/ directory contains its own configure script. This is so
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that in future we will be able to cross-compile the daemon.
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Mirroring tip
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
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Having a local Fedora mirror makes a massive difference to the time it
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takes to build and rebuild initramfs images.
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Failing that, use squid to cache yum downloads, but read this first:
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https://lists.dulug.duke.edu/pipermail/yum/2006-August/009041.html
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(In brief, because yum chooses random mirrors each time, squid doesn't
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work very well with default yum configuration. To get around this,
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choose a Fedora mirror which is close to you, set this with
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'./configure --with-mirror=[...]', and then proxy the whole lot
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through squid by setting http_proxy environment variable).
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You will also need to substantially increase the squid configuration
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limits:
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http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Using_Mock_to_test_package_builds#Using_Squid_to_Speed_Up_Mock_package_downloads
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IntelligentMirror is another possibility, although I couldn't get it
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to work for me.
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Copyright and license information
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
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Copyright (C) 2009 Red Hat Inc.
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The library is distributed under the LGPLv2+. The programs are
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distributed under the GPLv2+. Please see the files COPYING and
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COPYING.LIB for full license information.
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