guestfs-release-notes-1.28(1)

NAME
guestfs-release-notes - libguestfs Release Notes

RELEASE NOTES FOR LIBGUESTFS 1.28
These release notes only cover the differences from the previous stable/dev branch split (1.26.0). For detailed changelogs, please see the git repository, or the ChangeLog file distributed in the tarball.

  New features
Tools

virt-v2v(1) and virt-p2v(1) are tools for converting from foreign hypervisors (such as VMware or Xen) or physical machines, to KVM. These tools were previously a separate project. The code for both tools has been integrated into the libguestfs tree. As part of the refactoring, virt-p2v has been rewritten (from Ruby, now C), and virt-v2v now uses several modern features of qemu which make it run many times faster than before. virt-v2v(1) can import from: VMware vCenter, VMware OVA files, local disk files, libvirt, RHEL 5 Xen. It can output to: oVirt or Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV-M), OpenStack Glance, libvirt, qemu, local disk files.

virt-log(1) is a new tool for listing log files from guests. It supports a variety of guests including Linux traditional, Linux using journal, and Windows event log.

virt-builder(1) has a new "--machine-readable" option to make it simpler to consume virt-builder from other programs.

New virt-builder(1) and virt-customize(1) --chmod option.

virt-sysprep(1) will now remove: systemd journals, anaconda logs, lightdm logs, debian-installer files, apt logs, exim logs, ConsoleKit logs, firewalld logs, grubby logs, proftpd logs, libvirt/libxml logs, and several other log files. The virt-sysprep "user-account" operation is now able to remove or keep particular user accounts. (Pino Toscano).

New guestmount(1) --fd option, allowing you to run guestmount captive under another process.

virt-sparsify(1) has a new --tmp option allowing you to precisely control where temporary files are stored.

virt-sparsify(1) can now write to a block device.

virt-customize(1) and virt-sysprep(1) now support adding firstboot scripts to Windows guests.

virt-cat(1), virt-edit(1), virt-ls(1) now support the -m option, allowing you to override automatic inspection of guests and instead specify where to mount partitions (Pino Toscano).

The virt tools now have coloured output: green for OK, red for errors, blue for warnings.

Language bindings

You can build a Python distribution using "make -C python sdist"

Ruby bindings have switched from "Test::Unit" to "MiniTest".

The Java bindings are now compatible with OpenJDK 8 (Pino Toscano).

Inspection

Oracle Linux is returned as "oraclelinux" (Nikos Skalkotos).

Linux guests which do not have /etc/fstab can now be handled (Pino Toscano).

Minix is returned as "minix" (Pino Toscano).

Architectures

Aarch64 (64 bit ARM) support has been added.

Inspection and the "guestfs_file_architecture" call can now recognize arm (32 bit) and aarch64 guests.

  Security

CVE-2014-0191 Network usage and entity resolution in XML parsing
    Libguestfs previously used unsafe libxml2 APIs for parsing libvirt XML. These APIs defaulted to allowing network connections to be made when certain XML documents were presented. Using a malformed XML document it was also possible to exhaust all CPU, memory or file descriptors on the machine.

    Since the libvirt XML comes from a trusted source (the libvirt daemon) it is not thought that this could have been exploitable.

    This was fixed in libguestfs ≥ 1.27.9 and the fix was backported to stable versions ≥ 1.26.2, ≥ 1.24.9, ≥ 1.22.10 and ≥ 1.20.13. (Thanks: Dan Berrange, Pino Toscano).

Shellshock (bash CVE-2014-6271)
    This bash bug indirectly affects libguestfs. For more information see: https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2014-September/msg00252.html

  API
New APIs

"guestfs_clear_backend_setting"
"guestfs_get_backend_setting"
"guestfs_set_backend_setting"
    Use these APIs to set individual backend settings.

"guestfs_cpio_out"
    Convert a directory within the disk image to cpio format.

"guestfs_journal_get_realtime_usec"
    Fetch precise journal times, see sd_journal_get_realtime_usec(3).

"guestfs_lstatns"
"guestfs_lstatnslist"
"guestfs_statns"
    Enhanced versions of "guestfs_lstat", "guestfs_lstatlist", "guestfs_stat" which return nanosecond timestamps.

  Build changes
Libguestfs can now be built with qemu 2.x.

Add support for packaging the appliance on Mageia (Joseph Wang, Thierry Vignaud).

Augeas is now a required dependency.

Flex and bison are now required dependencies.

  Internals
User-Mode Linux (UML) is no longer a supported backend (although still available). It will be supported again once someone steps in and fixes various regressions and brokenness in the UML (Linux) kernel.

You can now connect gdb to qemu by specifying "LIBGUESTFS_BACKEND_SETTINGS=gdb"

Serial BIOS (sgabios) is now used by the libvirt backend (on x86 only) so that we see early BIOS messages.

For the OCaml virt tools, exceptions are now handled and printed by a common function.

A GCC warning about large stack frames is now enabled by default. Several places that used large arrays and structures on the stack have been fixed.

There is now a test for booting the appliance repeatedly. Useful for finding kernel leaks. See: tests/qemu/qemu-boot.c

There is a test for testing the speed of various qemu features such as virtio-serial uploads and block device writes. See: tests/qemu/qemu-speed-test.c

GCC warnings are now enabled for OCaml-C bindings in the OCaml virt tools.

The code for editing files used by virt-edit(1), guestfish(1) "edit" command, virt-customize(1) --edit option and more is now shared between all these utilities (thanks Pino Toscano).

The FUSE tests were rewritten in C to ensure finer control over how system calls are tested.

The update-bugs.sh script has been fixed so it should no longer create an empty "BUGS" file if the Bugzilla server is unavailable.

The virt-resize(1) tests now use a stochastic method to ensure much deeper and broader testing.

When the network is enabled, the appliance now uses DHCP to acquire an IP address.

If libvirt is being used then the appliance will connect to "virbr0" (can be overridden by setting "LIBGUESTFS_BACKEND_SETTINGS=network_bridge=<some_bridge>"). This enables full-featured network connections, with working ICMP, ping and so on.

  Bugs fixed

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1153515
    empty (but set) LIBGUESTFS_BACKEND prints libguestfs: error: invalid backend:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1151766
    libguestfs-bash-completion package contains file /usr/share/bash-completion/completions/virt-log, but no _virt_log() function in that file

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1151738
    typo error in man page of virt-edit

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1151033
    virt-v2v conversions from VMware vCenter server run slowly

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1150880
    virt-v2v: warning: display <graphics type='sdl'> was ignored when converting rhel5 guest with sdl graphics

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1150867
    'copy-file-to-file /src /dest' create file /dest even if command 'copy-file-to-file /src /dest' failed

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1150815
    Can not find "RECURSIVE LONG LISTING" in 'man virt-diff'

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1150701
    virt-v2v does not fstrim data disks and non-mounted filesystems

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1150475
    Exporting 2+ disk guest to RHEV, only one disk shows after import

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1148355
    virt-filesystems: incorrect LVM vg name when listing Fedora 21 Alpha Atomic image filesystems

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1148072
    Option missing --no-selinux-relabel

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1148012
    RFE: Allow qemu-bridge-helper to be used to implement guestfs_set_network

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1146815
    virt-v2v prints warning: /files/etc/fstab/8/spec references unknown device "cdrom"

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1146275
    regression setting root password with virt-builder/virt-customize

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1146017
    virt-v2v -v -x during windows guest conversion will hang at hivex: hivex_open: used block id ……

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1145995
    Improve the error info when converting windows guest with unclean file system

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1145916
    virt-v2v fails to convert win7 guest

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1144891
    RFE: stat calls do not return nanosecond timestamps

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1144766
    futimens() is a no-op via guestmount

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1144201
    guestfish can not restore terminal's output colour when exit guestfish, if the terminal's background colour is black then it will make a inconvenient

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1143949
    virt-customize option '--password-crypto' do not work

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1143887
    Warning shows when converting guests to rhev:chown: changing ownership of ‘/tmp/v2v.u48xag/*.ovf’: Invalid argument

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1143883
    warning shows when converting rhel7 guest:virt-v2v:could not update grub2 console: aug_get: no matching node (ignored)

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1143866
    virt-v2v fails with error: cannot open Packages index using db5

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1142416
    part-get-name give 'libguestfs: error: part_get_name: parted does not support the machine output (-m)' error message when run 'part-get-name /dev/sda 1'

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1142186
    virt-sysprep option '--mount-options' don't work well

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1142158
    Illegal command 'part-get-name /dev/sda1 1' cause libguestfs appliance crashed

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1142004
    virt-v2v prints warning:WARNING:/files/boot/grub/device.map references unknown device "xvda"

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1141723
    virt-v2v: error: disk sda has no defined format shows when converting xen hvm guest

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1141680
    [RFE] virt-v2 should support convert a domain with using domain's UUID instead of domain name

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1141631
    [RFE] virt-v2 should support convert a guest to a dir-pool with using pool's uuid

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1141157
    virt-sysprep option '--user-accounts' don't work well

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1141145
    virt-v2v fails to convert xen pv guests.

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1141113
    virt-v2v fails to convert esx guests

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1140946
    qemu-img shows error message for backing file twice

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1140894
    No error messages output if append '--format qcow2' after '-a guest.img', guest.img is a raw format image file

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1140547
    virt-builder option '--format' don't work well

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1140156
    RFE: Export to RHEV data domain

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1140050
    No error shows when multiple conflicting options used with virt-v2v

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1139973
    Improve the error info when converting xen guest with no passwordless SSH access configured

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1139543
    Improve the error info when converting guest with no space left

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1138586
    No error shows when converting running guest with virt-v2v

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1138184
    virt-v2v will fail when converting guests with initramfs-*kdump.img under /boot

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1138182
    xen guest will be kernel panic after converted by virt-v2v

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1130189
    Annoying message about permissions of /dev/kvm

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1123007
    libguestfs 'direct' backend should close file descriptors before exec-ing qemu to avoid leaking !O_CLOEXEC fds

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1122557
    virt-sparsify overwrites block devices if used as output files

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1113156
    Empty fstab breaks libguestfs inspection

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1111662
    Guestfs.Error("vgchange_uuid_all: Volume group has active logical volumes")

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1109174
    virt-win-reg manual page is corrupted

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1106548
    root gets an error accessing to a non-root dir on a snapshot guestmount VMDK img

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1103877
    These APIs also need to add to `guestfish -h` command list

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1102448
    mageia package list is incorrect

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1102447
    libguestfs 1.27.13 does not build due to libxml library order

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1100498
    RFE: non-polling mechanism to detect guestmount --no-fork readiness

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1099490
    scrub-file can't handle link file

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1099284
    typo errors in man pages

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1098718
    RFE: virt-builder aliases

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1096465
    virt-builder "proxy=off" setting doesn't turn off the proxy for downloads

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1094746
    virt-sparsify man fails to mention what happens to snapshots within a qcow2 image (they are discarded)

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1092753
    virt-builder: If several repos contain the same os-version images, then they are duplicated in -l output

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1091803
    tar-in-opts execute failed that cause libguestfs appliance crashed

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1088424
    virt-resize: libguestfs error: part_set_name: parted: /dev/sdb: Error during translation: Invalid or incomplete multibyte or wide character

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1088262
    virt-builder cannot write to a block device

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1085029
    Ruby tests fail with latest Ruby

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1079210
    virt-sparsify --in-place cannot sparsify as much as it should

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1079182
    virt-df cannot report used disk space of windows guest when updated to 6.5

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1077817
    virt-builder error: "syntax error at line 3: syntax error"

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1056290
    virt-sparsify overwrites block devices if used as output files

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/812970
    virt-rescue cannot set ≥<rescue> prompt, on Ubuntu 12.04

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.