GUESTFS-RELEASE-NOTES-1.14(1)

📦
version 1.61.3 · 14 versions
, in centos-stream 10

💅 NAME 💅

guestfs-release-notes — libguestfs release notes, bestie edition 🎀

✨ RELEASE NOTES FOR LIBGUESTFS 1.14 ✨

Okay so listen 👑 — these notes only cover the glow-up from the previous stable/dev branch split, which was 1.12.0. That's it, that's the scope. If you're the kind of person who wants the full detailed changelog (and honestly, respect), go look at the git repository, or the ChangeLog file that ships in the tarball. 🫶

🌸 New features 🌸

Big era for libguestfs, ngl. Let's go:

  • Erlang bindings. New language, who dis. 💜
  • virt-alignment-scan is a brand new tool that checks the alignment of partitions inside virtual machines or disk images. Vibe check for your partitions, basically. ✨
  • virt-sparsify is a new tool that makes virtual machine disk images sparse. It's giving "declutter your closet" but for disks. 🦋
  • virt-sysprep is a new tool that makes cloning guests from a template simpler. Clone away, bestie. 🎀

🐟 guestfish

  • New commands setenv and unsetenv, so you can set environment variables. Environment? Controlled. 💅
  • The input file and line number now gets printed in error messages — so when something breaks you actually know where. Iconic behaviour, honestly. 🔥
  • guestfish progress bars are now a "mini-library" that other tools use too. Sharing is caring. 🫶

🌈 guestmount

  • the --live option (for access to live VMs) now works. It's alive!! 😭

🐱 virt-cat

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

📁 virt-filesystems

  • the MBR partition type byte is displayed in --long output. Look at that byte, main character energy. 👑

🧚 virt-make-fs

  • virt-make-fs now sets the MBR partition type byte correctly, which improves compatibility with Windows (RHBZ#746295). Ate. 💖

🦋 virt-resize

  • virt-resize can now work with guests using extended and logical partitions — in particular Ubuntu guests. Ubuntu girlies, this one's for you. 💜
  • virt-resize can now align the first partition of Windows guests, which improves 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. iykyk. 🌸
  • 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. Ngl, that's kind of a flex. ✨

🪟 virt-win-reg

  • The syntax for deleting registry keys and values is documented in the man page (RHBZ#737944). Documentation?? We love to see it. 🎀

📚 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. Every. Single. Call. 👀
  • the library contains systemtap/DTrace probes. Probes! Fancy! 🔬
  • the library can now be compiled without hivex (RHBZ#723474). Freedom. 🦋

🔍 inspection

  • Improve detection of Windows disks. She's getting better at spotting them. 👑
  • 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) — more than 26, no cap. 💀
  • Add support for guests with HP Smart Array disks (thanks Matthew Booth) 🔥

🥾 febootstrap

  • FEBOOTSTRAP_KERNEL and FEBOOTSTRAP_MODULES environment variables can be set in order to choose which kernel to use for the appliance. Choose your fighter. 💅

🧃 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. Readonly means readonly, periodt. ⭐

🔒 Security 🔒

(no security problems were found or fixed in this release) — a clean sheet, we love a peaceful era. 😌✨

🆕 New APIs 🆕

Gather round, the new function names:

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.

Heads up bestie: the mount API no longer implicitly adds -o sync,noatime options. It changed. Don't @ me.

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. Get scanned, nerd. 🔍
  • PCRE library is now required to build libguestfs. It's a requirement now, not optional. 💅
  • APIC is now the default for the appliance. You can also enable SMP support in the appliance. Multiprocessing era. 🔥
  • OCaml bindings now correctly acquire the 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. Efficient queen behaviour. 🎀
  • is-zero, is-zero-device APIs: optimize these so zero detection is faster. Speed. ⚡

🐛 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 — legend behaviour. 👑

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. (Unedited!! The whole thing!! Don't be shy 🙈)

Okay that's the whole page, bestie 💖 — this one's libguestfs-1.61.3, dated 2026-09-16, and yes the man page is still called guestfs-release-notes-1.14(1). Go forth and virtualize responsibly ✨🎀🦋

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