--- name: "guestfs-release-notes-1.8" section: "1" platform: "linux" package: "libguestfs" version: "1.60.1-2" release: "Arch Linux 2026-11-01" platforms: ["linux"] url: "https://new.carta.tech/guestfs-release-notes-1.8" --- # guestfs-release-notes-1.8(1) libguestfs Release Notes ## NAME guestfs-release-notes - libguestfs Release Notes ## RELEASE NOTES FOR LIBGUESTFS 1.8 These release notes only cover the differences from the previous stable/dev branch split (1.6.0). For detailed changelogs, please see the git repository, or the ChangeLog file distributed in the tarball. ### New features ``` - Support and packages for Debian and Ubuntu. - Daily builds from git repository on Debian and Ubuntu to reduce risk of regressions. - Port to ArchLinux 'pacman' (thanks Thomas S Hatch). - The following tools have been rewritten in C (originally in Perl): . 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. - 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. - 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. - guestfish no longer has any dependencies on Perl - 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. - virt-inspector can list applications installed in Windows guests, along with a great deal of information about those applications. - Add support for inspecting: Linux Mint, Mandriva, FreeBSD. - guestfish --rw option (with no effect currently) to make potentially dangerous write access explicit. - 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). - 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. - Progress bars and progress notifications can now happen for upload commands. - Appliance builder more careful about not leaving temporary files around in /tmp. - getfattr/setfattr commands added to virt-rescue. - ROADMAP file covers roadmap and goals for future releases. ``` ### Security ``` - New SECURITY section in guestfs(3) API documentation. - virt-inspector no longer runs any guest commands. - Inspection code is more careful about avoiding very large files from guests which might previously have caused a denial of service. - FUSE calls into guestmount are now traced when using guestmount -x. ``` ### New APIs ``` - 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. - PCRE, libmagic, hivex and libvirt libraries are now completely optional for building. - Multiple memory leaks and file descriptor leaks fixed. - 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 'make install' rule. - is now a single file. - 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. - 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-faq/1.md), [**guestfs-performance**(1)](/guestfs-performance/1.md), [**guestfs-recipes**(1)](/guestfs-recipes/1.md), [**guestfs-testing**(1)](/guestfs-testing/1.md), [**guestfs**(3)](/guestfs/3.md), [**guestfish**(1)](/guestfish/1.md), http://libguestfs.org/ ## AUTHOR Richard W.M. Jones ## COPYRIGHT 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)](/libguestfs-test-tool/1.md) and paste the **complete, unedited** output into the bug report.