guestfs-release-notes-1.14(1)

NAME
guestfs-release-notes - libguestfs Release Notes

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.

  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.

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.

guestmount

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

virt-cat

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

virt-filesystems

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

virt-make-fs

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

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.

virt-win-reg

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

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).

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)

febootstrap

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

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.

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

  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.

  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.

  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

SEE ALSO
guestfs-examples(1), guestfs-faq(1), guestfs-performance(1), guestfs-recipes(1), guestfs-testing(1), guestfs(3), guestfish(1), http://libguestfs.org/

AUTHOR
Richard W.M. Jones

COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 2009-2025 Red Hat Inc.

LICENSE
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.

BUGS
To get a list of bugs against libguestfs, use this link: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/buglist.cgi?component=libguestfs&product=Virtualization+Tools

To report a new bug against libguestfs, use this link: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/enter_bug.cgi?component=libguestfs&product=Virtualization+Tools

When reporting a bug, please supply:

•   The version of libguestfs.

•   Where you got libguestfs (eg. which Linux distro, compiled from source, etc)

•   Describe the bug accurately and give a way to reproduce it.

•   Run libguestfs-test-tool(1) and paste the complete, unedited output into the bug report.