ANNOUNCE: New releases virt-manager 0.8.3 and virtinst 0.500.2

[Cole Robinson]

I'm happy to announce two new releases:

virt-manager 0.8.3: virt-manager is a desktop application for managing
KVM and Xen virtual machines via libvirt.

virtinst 0.500.2: virtinst is a collection of command line tools for
provisioning libvirt virtual machines, including virt-install and
virt-clone.

The releases can be downloaded from:

http://virt-manager.org/download.html

The direct download links are:

http://virt-manager.org/download/sources/virt-manager/virt-manager-0.8.3....
http://virt-manager.org/download/sources/virtinst/virtinst-0.500.2.tar.gz

The virt-manager release includes:

- New ability to manage network interfaces: start, stop, and view
    existing interfaces. Provision new bridge, bond, and vlan devices.
- New option to 'customize VM before install', which allows adjusting
    most VM options from the install wizard.

The virtinst release includes:

 - virt-install: --autostart option for setting domain autostart flag
 - virt-install: Allow specifying --host-device with lsusb and lspci
                 format (0x1234:0x5678 for USB, etc)
 - virtinst: New 'Interface' module for building libvirt interface XML

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this release through testing,
bug reporting, submitting patches, and otherwise sending in feedback!

Thanks,
Cole

[Laine Stump]

On 02/09/2010 10:25 AM, Cole Robinson wrote:
>  I'm happy to announce two new releases:
>
>  virt-manager 0.8.3: virt-manager is a desktop application for managing
>  KVM and Xen virtual machines via libvirt.
>      
Note that this new virt-manager exposes a memory leak in the augeas 
library (used by the netcf library, which libvirt uses for the  host 
interface config APIs). After several hours of an open host connection 
in virt-manager, libvirt's memory footprint grows to several hundred MB.

The cause of the leak has been found, and a patch submitted, but if 
anyone wants to avoid this leak in the interim, you can get the augeas 
source from:

   git clone git://git.fedorahosted.org/git/augeas.git

and apply the attached patch.

[Cole Robinson]

On 02/11/2010 12:26 AM, Laine Stump wrote:
>  On 02/09/2010 10:25 AM, Cole Robinson wrote:
> > I'm happy to announce two new releases:
> >
> > virt-manager 0.8.3: virt-manager is a desktop application for managing
> > KVM and Xen virtual machines via libvirt.
> >    
>  
>  Note that this new virt-manager exposes a memory leak in the augeas 
>  library (used by the netcf library, which libvirt uses for the  host 
>  interface config APIs). After several hours of an open host connection 
>  in virt-manager, libvirt's memory footprint grows to several hundred MB.
>  
>  The cause of the leak has been found, and a patch submitted, but if 
>  anyone wants to avoid this leak in the interim, you can get the augeas 
>  source from:
>  
>     git clone git://git.fedorahosted.org/git/augeas.git
>  
>  and apply the attached patch. 
Thanks a lot for tracking this down! It's probably I good idea to get
this patch into rawhide ASAP before we hit a slew of bug reports from
the fedora alpha.

Thanks,
Cole

[Laine Stump]

On 02/11/2010 08:39 AM, Cole Robinson wrote:
>  On 02/11/2010 12:26 AM, Laine Stump wrote:
>     
> > On 02/09/2010 10:25 AM, Cole Robinson wrote:
> >      
> >> I'm happy to announce two new releases:
> >>
> >> virt-manager 0.8.3: virt-manager is a desktop application for managing
> >> KVM and Xen virtual machines via libvirt.
> >>
> >>        
> > Note that this new virt-manager exposes a memory leak in the augeas
> > library (used by the netcf library, which libvirt uses for the  host
> > interface config APIs). After several hours of an open host connection
> > in virt-manager, libvirt's memory footprint grows to several hundred MB.
> >
> > The cause of the leak has been found, and a patch submitted, but if
> > anyone wants to avoid this leak in the interim, you can get the augeas
> > source from:
> >
> >     git clone git://git.fedorahosted.org/git/augeas.git
> >
> > and apply the attached patch.
> >      
>  Thanks a lot for tracking this down! It's probably I good idea to get
>  this patch into rawhide ASAP before we hit a slew of bug reports from
>  the fedora alpha.
>      
I'm sure lutter is listening ;-)

While we're tossing thanks around, the real thanks go to you for adding 
virInterface support into virt-manager. The feature didn't really seem 
finished until now.

I've noticed a couple problems that I thought I should list:

1) the "delay" property in bridges is a float, not an integer, so the 
spinner object you use to set it doesn't work for real-world values.

2) When a bridge is created based on an IP interface that uses DHCP, the 
<dhcp> node of the ethernet's XML (and actually the entire <protocol> 
node) isn't moved over to the bridge. This leaves me with a 
non-functioning network that I must fix with ncftool. It would be very 
useful if a bridge created from an existing ethernet inherited all 
<protocol> nodes from the ethernet.

I would try my hand at coming up with a patch for these two items, but 
my list is already too long ;-)