GUESTFS-RELEASE-NOTES-1.22(1)

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

🦋 guestfs-release-notes(1) — libguestfs Release Notes

okay bestie, welcome to the Virtualization Support section of the manual, this is guestfs-release-notes(1) and it's literally the glow-up diary of libguestfs 💅

✨ NAME ✨

guestfs-release-notes — libguestfs Release Notes

🎀 RELEASE NOTES FOR LIBGUESTFS 1.22 🎀

heads up, these notes only cover what's different from the previous stable/dev branch split (1.20.0) — not the whole entire history. if you want the full detailed changelogs, go dig through the git repository, or the ChangeLog file that ships in the tarball 📦

🌸 New features 🌸

💜 API

Remote access to disks — like, actually remote remote. here's the whole roster:

  • Network Block Device (nbd)
  • Secure Shell (ssh)
  • HTTP and HTTPS
  • FTP and FTPS
  • iSCSI
  • Gluster
  • Ceph/rbd (shoutout Mike Kelly 💖)
  • Sheepdog
  • TFTP

The SYSLINUX and EXTLINUX bootloaders can now be installed in disk images straight through the API. slay.

Inspection can now handle filesystems such as btrfs where subvolumes are separately mountable (ty Matthew Booth 🫶).

"Attach methods" got a rebrand and are now known as "backends" — but don't panic, compatibility with existing code is preserved. she ate and left no crumbs.

Filenames can contain ':', as long as you're running a newer QEMU. iykyk.

🦋 Tools

virt-alignment-scan and virt-df now scan multiple guests in parallel. multitasking queen behavior.

guestmount now passes errno accurately back to userspace in almost all cases — no cap, this is huge for debugging.

guestfish and other tools can now use a URI-like syntax to access remote disks, eg:

guestfish -a ssh://example.com/path/to/disk.img

guestfish and guestmount now let you specify the filesystem type when mounting, which is more secure (Dave Vasilevsky 💫).

guestfish is now officially the "guest filesystem shell". main character title, honestly.

guestfish allows only 1 "true" "t" "yes" "y" "on" 0 "false" "f" "no" "n" "off" for boolean values (case insensitive), and gives an error for all other strings. so don't try to be cute with it 🙈

New tool guestunmount for unmounting FUSE filesystems safely. safety first, always.

The guestmount --no-fork flag prevents guestmount from daemonizing.

virt-resize now uses sparse copies by default, saving considerable space for guests which are mostly empty. big W for your disk 💾

Bash tab completion has been rewritten and can now handle most tools, and correctly tab-complete "--long" options. in addition, bash completion scripts are loaded on demand — so it's fast and smart ✨

🌈 Language bindings

The Java API now supports events. we love an evolved king 👑

The Python object now inherits from the "object" base class.

Python methods which previously returned lists of tuples can now be made to return a Python dict. for backwards compatibility, you have to enable this by using the constructor option guestfs.GuestFS (python_return_dict=True).

The PHP bindings are now tested properly, and have had multiple fixes. glow-up complete 💅

The long-deprecated Perl Sys::Guestfs::Lib library has been removed. it's gone bestie, we had to. https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2013-April/msg00001.html

🎀 Examples

New example program showing how to enable debugging and capture log messages. very demure, very mindful 🧚

💜 Other

Distributors can add arbitrary extra packages to the appliance by doing:

./configure --with-extra-packages="list of package names"

Distributors can use:

./configure --with-supermin-extra-options="..."

to add arbitrary extra options to supermin.

🔥 Security 🔥

No security issues were found in this release. we stay winning 😌

👑 New APIs 👑

  • cp-r
  • extlinux
  • feature-available
  • get-program
  • is-whole-device
  • part-get-gpt-type
  • part-set-gpt-type
  • rename
  • set-program
  • syslinux

C only:

  • guestfs_event_to_string

⭐ Internals ⭐

The febootstrap tool has now been renamed to "supermin". libguestfs can use either, but now prefers "supermin". http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/supermin/

libxml2 is required to build libguestfs.

The hivexregedit program (from hivex) is required to build from git.

Internal functions can no longer be used unless the caller defines -DGUESTFS_PRIVATE=1. boundaries, bestie 🚧

Enable C compiler warnings in Python, Ruby bindings. we love catching problems early.

Fail early and clearly if libvirt does not support qemu/KVM (eg. if the default libvirt connection is to Xen) — no more mysterious vibes-only errors.

make print-subdirs rule, useful for selectively running tests.

Multiple fixes to allow separated (sourcedir != builddir) builds.

Multiple fixes to Haskell bindings.

ln and ln-f APIs now capture errno correctly.

Language binding tests use (mostly) a standard numbering scheme and aim to test the same range of features in each language. also the number of launches required has been reduced so these tests should run much more quickly ⚡

Library code internally uses GCC "__attribute__((cleanup))" (if available) to simplify memory allocation. fancy.

Internal header files have been reorganized. see the comments in src/guestfs-internal*.h

Internal code shared between the library and certain tools is now located in a static "libutils" library.

Almost all subdirectories can now use parallel builds, although note that the top-level directories still build in series. (a little patience, it's giving slow burn 🌸)

Use of "PATH_MAX" and "NAME_MAX" has been eliminated from the code.

The Java API now requires JVM ≥ 1.6.

Force use of "serial-tests" with automake ≥ 1.12.

Use of sockets in the library protocol layer is abstracted, allowing other non-POSIX layers to be added in future (see src/conn-socket.c).

"qemu-img info --output json" is used if available, for more secure parsing of the output of this command.

Distros can now use "make INSTALLDIRS=vendor install" to place Ruby bindings in vendordir. this eliminates a non-upstream patch carried by both Fedora and Debian. iconic, honestly 💎

Valgrind log files are now written to tmp/valgrind-DATE-PID.log

"make clean" cleans the local "tmp/" directory.

The C API tests have been rewritten using a more flexible generator language that allows arbitrary C code to be executing during tests.

💀 Bugs fixed 💀

🌟 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 (yes bestie, bugs happen, we're not mad) 🐛

Okay so if you find a bug in libguestfs — and like, we hope you don't, but also we want to know — here's the whole vibe. 💅

Wanna peep the bugs that are already out there in the wild? Slay, here's the link:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/buglist.cgi?component=libguestfs&product=Virtualization+Tools

Wanna report a new bug of your very own? Iconic. That link is right here:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/enter_bug.cgi?component=libguestfs&product=Virtualization+Tools

✨ when you report a bug, pls pls pls include ✨

  • The version of libguestfs. 🏷️ Like, which one, bestie, we need to know.
  • Where you got libguestfs (eg. which Linux distro, compiled from source, etc). 📦 The way that detail matters — no cap.
  • Describe the bug accurately and give a way to reproduce it. 🔍 Fr fr, "it broke" is not it. Show us the steps so we can make it happen too.
  • Run libguestfs-test-tool(1) and paste the complete, unedited output into the bug report. 🧪 This one is highkey the main character of the list — complete, unedited, don't you dare trim it. 🙈
lowkey a whole mood: the more deets you give us, the faster the fix. Do not gatekeep the output. 🫶

and that's the whole page, you made it to the end 🎀 This lil beauty is from libguestfs-1.61.3, dated 2026-09-16, and it's the guestfs-rel...-notes-1.22(1) manual — go forth and report responsibly, mwah 💖✨🦋

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