[virt-tools-list] [ANNOUNCE] libguestfs 1.16 released - tools for managing virtual machines and disk images

[Richard W.M. Jones]

libguestfs is a library and a set of tools for reading, writing,
managing, inspecting, rescuing, resizing and aligning disk images, and
offline and live virtual machines.

I'm pleased to announce the release of libguestfs 1.16, the next
stable release of libguestfs.  See the release notes below for the
full list of changes.

You can get source and binaries from the website:

  http://libguestfs.org/
  Source:       http://libguestfs.org/download/1.14-stable/
  Fedora:       http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/packageinfo?packageID=8391
  Debian/Ubuntu: (packages available soon)

Release notes for libguestfs 1.16.0
-----------------------------------

These release notes only cover the differences from the previous
stable/dev branch split (1.14.0).  For detailed changelogs, please see
the git repository, or the ChangeLog file distributed in the tarball.

New features

  libguestfs:

   - allow XFS filesystems to be created over an existing filesystem
     (Wanlong Gao)

   - the (unspecified) default alignment for part-disk has been
     changed to 64K for better support of high-end network-attached
     storage

   - new guestfs-testing(1) man page

   - list-filesystems returns MD devices containing filesystems
     (Matthew Booth)

   - support for GCC >= 4.7 (Jim Meyering)

   - check user does not add the same drive twice (Wanlong Gao).

  language bindings:

   - Experimental GObject bindings, with support for GObject
     Introspection.  You can now use libguestfs from Javascript.
     Please note these are not stable and final in this release.
     (Matthew Booth).

   - support for Ruby >= 1.9

   - Ruby bindings can be disabled individually (Hilko Bengen)

   - support for Python 2.6, 3.x (Richard Jones, Hilko Bengen)

   - support for PHP >= 5.4

   - new %guestfs_introspection hash is available in Perl bindings so
     you can query which optional arguments are available

  inspection:

   - guests with MD devices can be inspected (Matthew Booth)

   - support for GNU/Hurd guests

  guestfish:

   - libguestfs events (such as progress bar events and log messages) can
     be trapped and processed by user-defined shell scripts.

   - MD devices are tab-completed (Matthew Booth)

  virt tools:

   - New tool virt-format for erasing and making blank disks

   - virt-sparsify new --compress and -o options to allow for compressed
     and different format output

   - virt-sparsify can now detect and sparsify .vdi files

   - virt-sysprep no longer requires xmlstarlet; a new virt-inspector --xpath
     option has been added to replace this functionality

   - virt-rescue has a new --suggest option which suggests mount commands
     for the guest

   - virt-resize no longer requires OCaml pcre library

  libguestfs live:

   - daemon will no longer try to edit your live /etc/lvm configuration

   - fix a potential security problem with predictable /tmp names (Steve Kemp)

Security

  CVE-2011-4127, RHBZ#757071
  Mitigate possible privilege escalation via SG_IO ioctl
  For more information, see: https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs/commit/9a5f784d511a8f00a8386f316eab41fe660430db

New APIs

  blkid: print all attributes of a device known to blkid (Wanlong Gao)
  e2fsck: access to more features of e2fsck (Wanlong Gao)
  list-md-devices: list of Linux MD devices (Matthew Booth)
  md-create: create an MD device
  md-detail: returns metadata for an MD device (Matthew Booth)
  md-stop: stop an MD device (Wanlong Gao)
  tune2fs: allow ext2/3/4 filesystems to be tuned

Internals

  Git hosting has moved to http://github.com/libguestfs

  The various test directories have been rearranged logically, and now
  all appear under 'tests/'.

  There is a 'make extra-tests' rule which runs ordinary tests and
  additional tests, using valgrind to check for memory problems.

  Multiple memory leaks and other problems found by valgrind and fixed.

  Support for optional arguments in the generator has been rewritten
  to provide more features and safety (Matthew Booth).

  With gcc -fvisibility=hidden is used for internal symbols, avoiding
  call indirection via the PLT.

  RHashtable functions can be tested in the generator.

  ADD_ARG macro in daemon allows arg lists to be constructed without
  risk of stack smashing.

  Fix generation of OCaml functions that have more than 10 arguments.

  psmisc has been added to the appliance, allowing use of 'fuser',
  'killall' and 'pstree' for debugging.

  bindtests now cover RBufferOut and optional arguments (Matthew Booth).

Bugs fixed

 - 769680 temporary directories created during appliance builds are not cleaned up on error
 - 761460 guestfs_utimens hangs on named pipes
 - 761451 guestfs_utimens cannot set times on a directory
 - 760775 "guestfish: multi-boot operating systems are not supported by the -i option" should be more explanatory
 - 760669 guestfish copy-in and <! (inline execution) don't mix well: pclose: No child processes
 - 760000 libguestfs fails to compile with Ruby >= 1.9
 - 755729 Error message for resize2fs-M needs tweaking
 - 750889 Python code incompatible with Python v3.
 - 596761 Ctrl-\ causes guestfish to abort

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
virt-df lists disk usage of guests without needing to install any
software inside the virtual machine.  Supports Linux and Windows.
http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-df/