[ANNOUNCE] libguestfs 1.4.0 - tools for accessing and modifying disk images and virtual machines

[Richard W.M. Jones]

I'm pleased to announce a major new release of libguestfs.

libguestfs is a library and a set of tools for accessing and modifying
disk images and virtual machines.  You can use this for viewing and
editing files inside guests, scripting changes to VMs, monitoring disk
used/free statistics, P2V, V2V, performing partial backups, cloning
VMs, and much more.

Home page: http://libguestfs.org/
Downloads: http://libguestfs.org/download/?C=M;O=D

Release notes for libguestfs 1.4.0
----------------------------------

These release notes only cover the differences from the previous
stable/dev branch split (1.2.0).  For detailed changelogs, please see
the git repository, or the ChangeLog file distributed in the tarball.

New features

 - guestfish lets you choose a prepared disk image, eg:
     guestfish -N fs:ext4

 - Add write support to guestmount (FUSE) module.

 - virt-resize can now resize the content of partitions and logical
   volumes in the guest, and we have better support for shrinking guests.

 - Bash tab-completion script for guestfish.

 - Add ZFS support to virt-rescue.

 - New tool 'virt-make-fs' for creating filesystems with content.

 - Allow suffixes on any guestfish number parameter, eg. "1M".

 - guestfish 'man' command opens the manual page.

 - guestfish supports a "heredoc" syntax for uploading files:
     upload -<<_end_ /foo
     content
     _end_

 - Some guestfish commands now print their output in octal or hex
   where appropriate (RHBZ#583242).

 - Allow dash prefix on guestfish command line.  This ignores any
   error from the second command:                   (RHBZ#578407)
     guestfish -- cmd1 : -cmd2 : cmd3

 - guestfish -h / help command now returns an error for non-existent
   commands (RHBZ#597145).

 - New 'supported' command in guestfish to list optional groups of
   commands which are supported by the daemon / configuration.

 - virt-inspector and guestfish -i now work for filenames which
   contain spaces (RHBZ#507810).

 - Change the protocol to use link-local addresses, to avoid
   conflicting with any address that the host might be using
   (RHBZ#588763).

 - libguestfs now sets the correct time and timezone on filesystem
   modifications.

 - Sort the domains into alphabetical order in virt-df.

 - Make mkfs-b command work for FAT and NTFS by mapping the blocksize
   parameter to the cluster size (RHBZ#599464).

 - Add version numbers to Perl modules (RHBZ#521674).

 - Localization now works for all the libguestfs tools (RHBZ#559963).

 - Tools now support filesystem-on-image VMs (RHBZ#590167).

 - virt-list-partitions has a '-t' option to show the total size of disks.

 - Include extra Augeas lenses in the supermin appliance (Matthew Booth).

 - Add error and close callbacks.

 - Add explicit close method in the Perl API.

 - Multiple fixes for RHEL 5 compatibility.

 - Multiple fixes for Debian/Ubuntu compatibility.

 - Multiple revisions to improve the documentation.

Security

 - Fix a potential DoS in virt-inspector and virt-v2v if a specially
   crafted disk image contained a char device in place of one of the
   configuration files that we read under /etc (RHBZ#582484).

New APIs

 - aug-clear - clear Augeas path
 - available-all-groups - return a list of all optional groups
 - base64-in - upload base64-encoded data to file
 - base64-out - download file and encode as base64
 - checksum-device - compute checksums on the contents of a device
 - checksums-out - compute checksums of multiple files in a directory
 - debug-upload - upload a file to the appliance
 - fallocate64 - preallocate a file in the guest filesystem
 - fill-pattern - fill a file with a repeating pattern of bytes
 - get-umask - get the current umask
 - lvresize-free - expand an LV to fill free space
 - ntfsresize - resize an NTFS filesystem
 - ntfsresize-size - resize an NTFS filesystem (with size)
 - part-del - delete a partition
 - part-get-bootable - get the bootable flag of a partition
 - part-get-mbr-id - get the MBR type byte of a partition
 - part-set-mbr-id - set the MBR type byte of a partition
 - pvresize-size - resize a physical volume (with size)
 - pwrite - write to part of a file
 - resize2fs-size - resize an ext2/3/4 filesystem (with size)
 - txz-in - unpack compressed tarball to directory (RHBZ#580556)
 - txz-out - pack directory into compressed tarball (RHBZ#580556)
 - vfs-label - get the filesystem label
 - vfs-uuid - get the filesystem UUID
 - vgscan - rescan for LVM physical volumes, volume groups and logical volumes
 - write - create a new file
 - zero-device - write zeroes to an entire device

Internals

 - Extend the generator to support testing optional features.
 - Stricter checks on input parameters to many calls (RHBZ#501893 RHBZ#501894)
 - Extend the protocol to support sending arbitrary 8 bit data buffers.
 - Ship 'BUGS' file with releases.  This is a summary of the bugs in
   the Red Hat Bugzilla database.
 - Ship 'RELEASE-NOTES' file with releases, containing release notes.
 - Unify supermin appliance building into one place, in febootstrap 2.7.
 - Fix the protocol code to handle the case where both ends send cancel
   messages at the same time.

Bugs fixed

 - 612178 guestfish: using -m option in conjunction with --listen option causes appliance
to die
 - 610880 libguestfs should set broader read perms on tmpdir, so works in some situations
when executed with umask 077
 - 604691 OCaml bindings are not thread safe
 - 603870 Updates to Spanish translation
 - 602592 [RFE] expose guestfs_close in perl bindings
 - 600977 virt-df -h --csv "Argument .. isn't numeric in printf"
 - 599464 mkfs-b does not support vfat/ntfs
 - 598807 add_cdrom does not work in RHEL 6
 - 598309 part-list and several other cmd failed on libguestfs on RHEL5
 - 597145 guestfish 'help' command should indicate error in exit status with an
unknown command
 - 597135 guestfish write-file cmd does not check "size" parameter
 - 597118 A warning should be given in the help of mke2journal-L for the length of label
 - 597112 get-e2uuid should use blkid instead of "tune2fs -l" to get filesystem
UUID
 - 596776 virt-inspector doesn't discover modprobe aliases on RHEL 3 guests
 - 596763 Updates to Spanish translation
 - 593292 Updates to Spanish translation
 - 592883 can not edit files on  images mounted with guestmount cmd
 - 592360 Updates to Spanish translation
 - 591250 virt-tar prints "tar_in: tar subcommand failed on directory" if the
archive is compressed or not in the right format
 - 591155 virt-tar prints "tar_in: tar subcommand failed on directory" if a disk
image is not writable
 - 591142 virt-inspector should give an error for unrecognized disk images
 - 590167 virt-inspector and other virt tools should be able to handle filesystem-on-image
VMs
 - 589039 guestfish read-file cmd will cause daemon hang when read large files
 - 588851 guestfs_launch() returns -1, but guestfs_last_error() == NULL
 - 588763 libguestfs should use non-public or link-local addresses for appliance network
 - 588733 Updates to Spanish translation
 - 588651 guestfish 'strings-e' cmd does not give proper error message or hint
 - 587484 lvresize can't reduce size of a volumn
 - 585961 Updates to Spanish translation
 - 585223 ntfsresize should support shrinking filesystems
 - 585222 pvresize should support shrinking PVs
 - 585221 resize2fs should support shrinking filesystems
 - 584038 Updates to Spanish translation
 - 583554 [FEAT] mknod-mode command is needed to set mode explicitly
 - 583242 [RFE] guestfish should print outputs in a suitable base (eg. octal for modes)
 - 582993 guestfish eats words when tab completing case (in)sensitive paths
 - 582953 Misleading help information about lvcreate command
 - 582948 mknod command doesn't make block, character or FIFO devices
 - 582929 mknod doesn't check for invalid mode
 - 582901 guestfish chmod/umask commands do not check invalid mode value
 - 582899 guestfish:sparse is missed from command autocomplete list
 - 582891 [Feature Request] behavior and return value of guestfish umask cmd should be
changed
 - 582548 [mknod] umask shouldn't take effect when mode is set explicitly
 - 582484 some guestfish sub commands can not handle special files properly
 - 582252 Updates to Spanish translation
 - 581501 Updates to Spanish translation
 - 580650 virt-inspector warns "No grub default specified at
/usr/lib/perl5/Sys/Guestfs/Lib.pm at [...]"
 - 580556 request for libguestfs to support .txz tarballs
 - 580246 tar-in command hangs if uploading more than available space
 - 580016 aug-ls in guestfish does not take augeas variable as argument
 - 579664 guestfish doesn't report error when there is not enough space for image
allocation
 - 579608 multiple commands in guestfish can not work for symbol links
 - 579155 libguestfs hangs if qemu doesn't start (in null vmchannel mode)
 - 578407 the prefix '-' in sub-command isn't handled by guestfish in remote
control mode
 - 576879 libguestfs protocol loses synchronization if you 'upload' before
mounting disks
 - 559963 libguestfs Perl programs do set locale, but still localization doesn't work
 - 521674 Perl modules are unversioned, but should carry version numbers
 - 516096 Race condition in test_swapon_label_0: /sbin/blockdev: BLKRRPART: Device or
resource busy
 - 507810 guestfish -i / virt-inspector cannot handle spaces in filenames
 - 502533 Updated Polish translation of libguestfs
 - 501894 Some String parameters should be OptString
 - 501893 String parameters should be checked for != NULL
 - 501889 write-file does not support strings containing ASCII NUL
 - 484986 grub-install fails on virtio disk

Release notes for previous versions of libguestfs
-------------------------------------------------

2009-11-10 : 1.0.78
https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2009-November/msg00095.html

2009-09-13 : 1.0.67
https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2009-August/msg00281.html

2009-07-23 : 1.0.64
https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2009-July/msg00059.html

2009-07-14 : 1.0.59
https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2009-July/msg00023.html


-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
Read my programming blog: http://rwmj.wordpress.com
Fedora now supports 80 OCaml packages (the OPEN alternative to F#)
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