GUESTFS-RELEASE-NOTES-1.8(1)

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

💖 guestfs-release-notes — libguestfs Release Notes 💖

Okay bestie, this is guestfs-release-notes, aka the official gossip column for libguestfs. It's filed under Virtualization Support and it's literally just the receipts of what changed, release by release. 🎀

✨ RELEASE NOTES FOR LIBGUESTFS 1.8 ✨

So real talk: these notes only cover the differences from the previous stable/dev branch split, which was 1.6.0. That's it, that's the scope. If you're the type who wants the detailed changelogs (and honestly icon behavior), go look at the git repository, or the ChangeLog file that ships inside the tarball. 🫶

🌸 New features

  • Support and packages for Debian and Ubuntu. she's expanding her friend group fr.
  • Daily builds from the git repository on Debian and Ubuntu, specifically to reduce the risk of regressions. proactive queen 💅
  • Port to ArchLinux 'pacman' (thanks Thomas S Hatch 🙌).
  • The following tools have been rewritten in C (originally in Perl, rip):
    • virt-cat
    • virt-df
    • virt-inspector
    • virt-ls
    • virt-rescue
  • Some C tools support encrypted guests automatically. This is supported in: guestfish, guestmount, virt-cat, virt-inspector, virt-ls. locked doors? not a problem bestie 🔥
  • New tool virt-filesystems (in C) which is a replacement for virt-list-filesystems and virt-list-partitions, and has a superset of the functionality of those tools. glow-up of the year honestly 👑
  • guestfish, guestmount and the C tools use unified command line option parsing, so they support many common options such as '-a disk.img', '-d libvirt-domain', '-x', '-v'. The old command line option parsing is preserved for compatibility in scripts etc. (yes, your crusty scripts still work, breathe 😭).
  • guestfish no longer has any dependencies on Perl. independence era ✨
  • New man pages containing programming examples: guestfs-examples(3) (C/C++), guestfs-ocaml(3), guestfs-python(3), guestfs-ruby(3).
  • Trace mode prints return values from API functions. the way it actually tells you things now 😌
  • virt-inspector can list applications installed in Windows guests, along with a great deal of information about those applications. nosy in the best way 🙈
  • Add support for inspecting: Linux Mint, Mandriva, FreeBSD.
  • guestfish --rw option (with no effect currently) to make potentially dangerous write access explicit.
Heads up bestie — it does literally nothing right now. It's just there so write access, which is potentially dangerous, is explicit. Vibes-based safety. 💀
  • guestfish --listen --csh for compatibility with csh, tcsh (thanks Eric Blake 🙏).
  • The first upstream version that introduced each API function is now documented in guestfs(3). every function gets a birth certificate 🎀
  • guestfs_last_errno allows you to retrieve the errno from the daemon, correctly translated to the local operating system.
  • Functions can now have optional parameters. flexible icons only ✨
  • Progress bars and progress notifications can now happen for upload commands. we LOVE a progress bar, main character energy 📊
  • Appliance builder more careful about not leaving temporary files around in /tmp. she cleans up after herself, we stan 🌸
  • getfattr/setfattr commands added to virt-rescue.
  • ROADMAP file covers roadmap and goals for future releases. manifesting 🔮

🔒 Security

  • New SECURITY section in guestfs(3) API documentation.
  • virt-inspector no longer runs any guest commands. no cap, zero commands executed 🚫
  • Inspection code is more careful about avoiding very large files from guests which might previously have caused a denial of service.
That's a real one, okay? Big scary guest files used to be able to DoS you. Now they're handled way more carefully. 🔥
  • FUSE calls into guestmount are now traced when using guestmount -x.

🦋 New APIs

A whole new batch just dropped:

  • add-domain
  • add-drive-opts
  • getxattr
  • inspect-get-hostname
  • inspect-get-package-format
  • inspect-get-package-management
  • inspect-get-roots
  • inspect-list-applications
  • lgetxattr
  • mkfs-opts

🧚 Internals

  • C programs now only link precisely with the libraries that they use. no extra baggage 💅
  • PCRE, libmagic, hivex and libvirt libraries are now completely optional for building.
  • Multiple memory leaks and file descriptor leaks fixed. self-care arc 💖
  • Add a POD wrapper to unify generation of man pages and HTML files across all programs.
  • Source includes phony images of Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu and Windows guests.
  • Ruby bindings have a 'make install' rule.
  • <guestfs.h> is now a single file.
  • <guestfs.h> does not require XDR headers.
  • ocaml xml-light library is no longer required to build (thanks Maxim Koltsov 🙌).
  • ./configure --disable-[...] for each language binding (thanks Maxim Koltsov).
  • Old ocaml-viewer program removed (use guestfs-browser instead).
  • New C API test type 'InitScratchFS' makes the tests run a little more quickly. speedy queen ⭐
  • Excluded packages in the appliance are now listed in a separate file appliance/excludelist.in, and can be customized per-distro.

💀 Bugs fixed

  • 663407 readlink and readlinklist returns /sysroot/ in some paths
  • 661280 virt-rescue: panic when shutting down: "/sbin/reboot: No such file or directory"
  • 657499 checksum: wrong check sum type causes umount to fail
  • 655554 Whole disk paths are not made canonical by virt-inspector
  • 654638 openssl updated to 1.0.0b libguestfs depends on exact file names
  • 652796 ruby bindings not installed by 'make install', hence omitted from the binary distribution

👀 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 — and bestie, please supply all of it, we're begging 🙏:

  • 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 and unedited, okay? Don't be trimming the logs, that's how the bug gets solved fr fr. 💅

okay that's the whole thing, mwah 💋 — this was libguestfs-1.61.3, dated 2026-09-16, and you were reading guestfs-release-notes-1.8(1). go be iconic with your virtual machines bestie 🦋✨

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