GUESTFS-RELEASE-NOTES-1.16(1)

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

🌸 guestfs-release-notes — libguestfs Release Notes 💅

okay so this is guestfs-release-notes, the libguestfs release notes page, and bestie, it's literally a trip down memory lane for version 1.16. Buckle up. 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

guestfs-release-notes — libguestfs Release Notes

🦋 RELEASE NOTES FOR LIBGUESTFS 1.16 🦋

Heads up: these notes only cover what changed since the previous stable/dev branch split (1.14.0). If you want the full, detailed changelogs, go look at the git repository, or the ChangeLog file that ships in the tarball. iykyk. 💜

🌈 New features 🌈

👑 libguestfs

  • XFS filesystems can now 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
  • brand 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 🔥

fr fr pay attention to this one, it's giving serious business:
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. (slay, valgrind.)

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

🌸 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 (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.

and that's the whole page bestie, no cap 🫶 this was libguestfs-1.61.3, dated 2026-09-16, and it's the guestfs-release-notes page for 1.16 — go forth and read the changelogs, you're gonna slay 💖✨

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