GUESTFS-RELEASE-NOTES-1.40(1)

πŸ“¦
version 1.61.3 Β· 14 versions
, in centos-stream 10

✨ NAME ✨

Okay bestie, this is the manual page for guestfs-release-notes β€” literally libguestfs Release Notes. The manual page name is guestfs-release-notes-1.40(1), and it lives under Virtualization Support. We are so in our release-notes era right now. πŸ’…

πŸŽ€ RELEASE NOTES FOR LIBGUESTFS 1.40 πŸŽ€

These release notes only cover the differences from the previous stable/dev branch split (1.38.0). For the detailed changelogs, bestie, please see the git repository, or the ChangeLog file distributed in the tarball. No cap.

🌸 New features 🌸

πŸ’… New features in existing tools πŸ’…

  • virt-inspector now displays the libosinfo short ID for guests (Pino Toscano). Iconic.
  • guestfish -N will now generate 1G disks instead of 100M disks by default. Big disk energy.
  • virt-resize supports f2fs filesystems (Pino Toscano).
  • libguestfs-test-tool now supports bash tab completion (Pino Toscano).
  • The --machine-readable option now supports sending output to files or stdout/stderr. This works uniformly across most OCaml-based virt tools, specifically: virt-builder, virt-builder-repository, virt-dib, virt-get-kernel, virt-resize, virt-sparsify, and virt-v2v (Pino Toscano). The way that got unified? Obsessed.
  • virt-builder --uninstall option now works on SUSE (Sebastian Meyer).
  • virt-builder now supports Windows. We are not able to ship Windows templates in the public repository for obvious licensing reasons, but if you are an MSDN subscriber you may build your own. See https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2018/09/13/creating-windows-templates-for-virt-builder/ β€” yes, that URL is part of the lore.
  • Many tools now support a --key option allowing you to pass in decryption keys for filesystems stored in local files on the host rather than having to feed them in over stdin (Pino Toscano).

πŸš€ virt-v2v and virt-p2v πŸš€

  • New -o rhv-upload mode for directly uploading images to RHV, bypassing the Export Storage Domain (TomΓ‘Ε‘ GolembiovskΓ½, Nir Soffer, Daniel Erez, Pino Toscano). Main character mode.
  • New -o openstack mode for directly uploading images to OpenStack and Cinder using OpenStack APIs.
  • virt-v2v now has a general mechanism for input and output options: -io and -oo.
  • virt-v2v can now install the RHV tools or QEMU GA in guests (TomΓ‘Ε‘ GolembiovskΓ½).
  • The huge manual has now been split into several smaller documents and is more focused on helping users to accomplish specific v2v tasks. It’s giving organized.
  • Multiple improvements to the OVF metadata when converting to RHV (TomΓ‘Ε‘ GolembiovskΓ½, Pino Toscano, Arik Hadas).
  • virt-v2v can now convert Linux guests with split kernel packages, especially Ubuntu 18.04 (Pino Toscano).
  • virt-v2v old --password-file option has been replaced by -ip (the old option remains for backwards compatibility). Periodt.
  • virt-v2v now preserves the VM Generation ID.
  • virt-v2v has a new --mac option allowing specific NICs to be mapped precisely to networks or bridges on the target.
  • New virt-v2v --print-estimate option to estimate the size of data that virt-v2v will copy.
  • virt-v2v is now usually able to remove open-vm-tools and VMware Tools from the Linux guest during conversion (Pino Toscano).
  • virt-v2v can now support UEFI conversions to RHV (TomΓ‘Ε‘ GolembiovskΓ½).
  • virt-p2v now prefers you to shut down instead of rebooting the machine after conversion has finished (Pino Toscano).
  • virt-v2v now writes the libosinfo short ID to the libvirt metadata when using -o local and -o libvirt output modes (Martin Kletzander).

🧚 Language bindings 🧚

  • OpenJDK 10+ is supported (Pino Toscano).
  • Java bindings fixed for Gentoo host (Martin Kletzander).

πŸ” Inspection πŸ”

  • Support Kali Linux (Pino Toscano).
  • When inspecting mountpoints, look for /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf as well as /etc/mdadm.conf (Nikolay Ivanets).
  • Improved support for OpenSUSE Tumbleweed (Pino Toscano).

πŸ–₯️ Architectures and platforms πŸ–₯️

  • Miscellaneous macOS build fixes (Adam Robinson).

✨ Other ✨

  • Multiple documentation typos fixed (Yuri Chornoivan).

πŸ”’ Security πŸ”’

See also guestfs-security(1).

  • CVE-2018-11806 β€” Qemu’s slirp (userspace networking) had several buffer overflows which could be triggered from the guest or network side. Not cute, bestie; patch vibe.

πŸ› οΈ API πŸ› οΈ

🌟 New APIs 🌟

  • f2fs_expand β€” Expand an f2fs filesystem (Pino Toscano).
  • inspect_get_osinfo β€” Get the libosinfo short ID for the inspected guest (Pino Toscano).
  • lvm_scan β€” This rescans all PVs, VGs and LVs, optionally activating them.

πŸ’« Other API changes πŸ’«

  • part_get_mbr_part_type was reimplemented in OCaml (Nikolay Ivanets).
  • list_filesystems now filters out MBR extended partitions (Nikolay Ivanets).
  • vgscan has been deprecated. Use the new lvm_scan API in preference. This is the β€œold thing remains but don’t make it your whole personality” situation.

🧱 Build changes 🧱

  • The JSON library switched from yajl to Jansson β‰₯ 2.7 (Pino Toscano).
  • Support for The Sleuth Kit 4.5 (Pino Toscano).
  • Multiple improvements in the ./configure script (Lin Ma).
  • More out-of-tree build fixes (Hilko Bengen).
  • Some work on reproducible builds (Bernhard M. Wiedemann).

🫧 Internals 🫧

  • lvmetad is now used unconditionally, and is started much earlier in the appliance boot process. This fixes support for certain PV types. Lowkey glow-up.
  • On Debian, dash is installed inside the appliance and in virt-rescue (Pino Toscano).
  • The amount of RAM assigned to the appliance has been increased from 500M to 768M (on x86_64, other architectures have different limits). This enables use of up to 255 disks when using recent Linux kernels. That’s so many disks; disk queen behavior.
  • virt-v2v now models the source machine type (eg. i440FX, Q35 or virt).
  • virt-p2v now generates configuration code automatically, also code for parsing the kernel command line.
  • Use LT_INIT instead of AC_PROG_LIBTOOL.
  • The OCaml JSON code for parsing and serializing has been unified into a single abstract data type.
  • Most OCaml tools are now built using the PIC runtime. This has a performance penalty on i686, but is relatively free on other architectures and has security benefits.
  • The direct backend now queries the qemu binary for availability of KVM, instead of using a heuristic based on /dev/kvm (Andrea Bolognani).
  • Our β€œclever” libxml2 writer macros are now used consistently across all parts of the code base.
  • Qemu dropped -nodefconfig without telling us. The equivalent -no-user-config option is now used instead. Qemu also moved the serial option from -drive to -device, again without any notice, and this is also fixed. The disrespect? Unreal.

πŸ› Bugs fixed πŸ›

…and the rest of the bug list is literally right here, bestie, no cap β€” every single link preserved because we don't gatekeep receipts πŸ’…

  • https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1532224 β€” "Resume=/dev/sdaX can't be updated to resume=/dev/vdaX in rhel7 guest's grub file after v2v conversion" β€” like, the guest's grub file just refuses to get with the program post-conversion 😭
  • https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1530967 β€” "Change categories of "Guest Operating system management by VIX API" in v2v man page"
  • https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1527334 β€” "Various -it vddk -io vddk options should be documented, removed or fixed"* β€” the classic "document it, delete it, or fix it" ultimatum, we love a decisive queen ✨
  • https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1148012 β€” "Reverted: RFE: Allow qemu-bridge-helper to be used to implement guestfs_set_network" β€” yeah this one got reverted, so don't come for it 🫢

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

Go touch grass in these other pages, they're all iconic in their own way:

πŸ’– AUTHOR πŸ’–

The one and only Richard W.M. Jones. main character energy, fr fr πŸ‘‘

Copyright (C) 2009-2025 Red Hat Inc. β€” periodt.

πŸ’… LICENSE πŸ’…

Okay so this is the legal bit and we do not paraphrase legal bits, so here it is in its full unedited glory:

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.
Yeah, the ALL CAPS warranty disclaimer is real and it is not a vibe β€” no warranty, no guarantees, don't @ me.

πŸ› BUGS πŸ›

Wanna stalk the existing bug list? Here's your link, bestie:

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

Got a new bug to spill? Report it here:

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

And when you do report one, pls pls pls include all of this, or the maintainers will be in shambles 😭:

  • 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.
"Complete, unedited" is doing a LOT of heavy lifting there β€” no trimming, no ✨aesthetic✨ edits, just paste the whole thing. iykyk.

And that's the whole page, babe πŸ¦‹ this was libguestfs-1.61.3, dated 2026-09-16, and it's the release notes for guestfs-rel...-notes-1.40(1) β€” go forth and virtualize responsibly πŸ’œπŸŒΈ

πŸ“¦ where this page comes from