1guestfs-building(1) Virtualization Support guestfs-building(1)
2
6 guestfs-building - How to build libguestfs from source
7
9 This manual page describes how to build libguestfs from source.
10 The main steps are:
12 · Install the requirements.
14 · Build, either from the git repository or from a tarball.
16 · Run the tests.
18 · Run the tools from the source directory, or install.
20
22 Short cut for Fedora or Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) users
23 On Fedora, use dnf(8) to install all the requirements:
24 dnf builddep libguestfs
26 dnf install autoconf automake libtool gettext-devel
27 On systems still using yum(8), do:
29 yum-builddep libguestfs
31 yum install autoconf automake libtool gettext-devel
32 Short cut for Debian or Ubuntu users
34 Use APT to install all the requirements:
35 apt-get build-dep libguestfs
37 apt-get install autoconf automake libtool-bin gettext
38 If that command doesn't work, take a look at the Debian source package
40 http://packages.debian.org/source/libguestfs, at the list of
41 "build-depends" and "build-depends-indep", and install everything
42 listed there.
43 Full list of requirements
45 appliance/packagelist.in
46 Install as many package names found in this file as possible. (It
47 is not strictly required to install all of them).
48 Note: If you build libguestfs followed by installing appliance
50 packages, the build will not pick them up automatically, even if
51 you do "make clean". You have to do this command to clean the old
52 supermin appliance and force a new one to be prepared:
53 make -C appliance clean-supermin-appliance
55 qemu ≥ 1.3.0
57 Required.
58 qemu-img ≥ 1.3.0
60 Required. Virt-p2v and virt-v2v requires qemu-img ≥ 2.2.0.
61 kernel ≥ 2.6.34
63 Required. The following features must be enabled: "virtio-pci",
64 "virtio-serial", "virtio-block", "virtio-net".
65 supermin ≥ 5.1.0
67 Required. For alternatives, see "USING A PREBUILT BINARY
68 APPLIANCE" below.
69 glibc
71 Required. We use the custom printf formatters extension of glibc
72 (see "DAEMON CUSTOM PRINTF FORMATTERS" in guestfs-hacking(1)).
73 XDR (tirpc, glibc or other)
75 Required. We use the XDR implementation from "<rpc/xdr.h>", which
76 may come from glibc, tirpc or another library.
77 The "rpcgen" tool is optional, except if you want to compile from
79 git and/or patch libguestfs with new APIs.
80 Gcc or Clang
82 Required. We use "__attribute__((cleanup))" which is a GCC
83 extension also supported by Clang.
84 Perl
86 Required. Various build steps and tests are written in Perl. Perl
87 is not needed at runtime except if you need to run a small number
88 of virt tools which are still written in Perl.
89 Perl "Pod::Man"
91 Perl "Pod::Simple"
92 Required. Part of Perl core.
93 OCaml ≥ 4.01
95 OCaml findlib
96 Required.
97 autoconf
99 automake
100 gettext
101 Required if compiling from git. Optional if compiling from
102 tarball.
103 cpio
105 Required.
106 gperf
108 Required.
109 flex
111 bison
112 Required.
113 Perl-compatible Regular Expressions (PCRE) library
115 Required.
116 genisoimage
118 Required.
119 libxml2
121 Required.
122 ncurses
124 Required.
125 augeas ≥ 1.0.0
127 Required.
128 xz Required.
130 Jansson ≥ 2.7
132 Required.
133 po4a
135 Required if compiling from git. Optional if compiling from
136 tarball.
137 hivex ≥ 1.2.7
139 ocaml-hivex
140 Required. ocaml-hivex is the OCaml binding for hivex, which is
141 required when building the daemon.
142 libmagic
144 Required. This is the library used by the file(1) command.
145 libvirt ≥ 0.10.2
147 Optional. Always use the latest possible version of libvirt.
148 xmllint
150 Optional. Used only for tests.
151 libconfig
153 Optional. Used to parse libguestfs’s own config files, eg.
154 /etc/libguestfs-tools.conf.
155 libselinux
157 Optional. Used by the libvirt backend to securely confine the
158 appliance (sVirt).
159 Berkeley DB utils (db_dump, db_load, etc)
161 Optional. Usually found in a package called "db-utils",
162 "db4-utils", "db4.X-utils" etc.
163 systemtap
165 Optional. For userspace probes.
166 readline
168 Optional. For nicer command line editing in guestfish(1).
169 acl Optional. Library and programs for handling POSIX ACLs.
171 libcap
173 Optional. Library and programs for handling Linux capabilities.
174 libldm
176 Optional. Library and ldmtool(1) for handling Windows Dynamic
177 Disks.
178 sd-journal
180 Optional. Library for accessing systemd journals.
181 gdisk
183 Optional. GPT disk support.
184 netpbm
186 Optional. Render icons from guests.
187 icoutils
189 Optional. Render icons from Windows guests.
190 Perl "Expect"
192 Optional. Perl module used to test virt-rescue(1).
193 FUSE
195 Optional. fusermount(1), libfuse and kernel module are all needed
196 if you want guestmount(1) and/or mount-local support.
197 static glibc
199 Optional. Used only for testing.
200 qemu-nbd
202 nbdkit
203 Optional. qemu-nbd is used for testing.
204 virt-p2v(1) requires either qemu-nbd or nbdkit, but these only need
206 to be present on the virt-p2v ISO, they do not need to be installed
207 at compile time.
208 uml_mkcow
210 Optional. For the UML backend.
211 curl
213 Optional. Used by virt-builder for downloads.
214 GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG, gpg) v1 or v2
216 Optional. Used by virt-builder for checking digital signatures.
217 liblzma
219 Optional. If available, virt-builder will use this library for
220 fast, parallel uncompression of templates.
221 Gtk ≥ 2.24, or 3
223 Optional.
224 Used by the virt-p2v graphical user interface.
226 Either Gtk 2 or Gtk 3 can be used. If you want to select a
228 specific version of Gtk, use "./configure --with-gtk=2" or
229 "./configure --with-gtk=3".
230 D-Bus
232 Optional.
233 If the D-Bus low level C API is available, virt-p2v can send a
235 D-Bus message to logind to inhibit power saving (sleep, suspend,
236 etc) during P2V conversions.
237 If this API is not available at build time, then very long
239 conversions might be interrupted if the physical machine goes to
240 sleep.
241 zip
243 unzip
244 Optional. Used by virt-v2v to handle OVA files.
245 python-evtx
247 Optional. Used by virt-log(1) to parse Windows Event Log files.
248 OCaml gettext
250 Optional. For localizing OCaml virt tools.
251 ocaml-ounit ≥ 2.0.0
253 Optional. For testing the common OCaml modules.
254 ocaml-libvirt ≥ 0.6.1.5
256 Optional. For building the optional virt-v2v test harness.
257 Perl "Module::Build" ≥ 0.19
259 Perl "Test::More"
260 Optional. Used to build and test the Perl bindings.
261 Python ≥ 2.2
263 Optional. Used to build the Python bindings. For building Python
264 2 or Python 3 bindings, see "BUILDING PYTHON 2 AND PYTHON 3
265 BINDINGS" below.
266 Python "unittest"
268 Optional. Used to run the Python testsuite.
269 Ruby
271 rake
272 rubygem-minitest
273 rubygem-rdoc
274 Optional. Used to build the Ruby bindings.
275 Java ≥ 1.6
277 Optional. Java, JNI and jpackage-utils are needed for building
278 Java bindings.
279 GHC Optional. Used to build the Haskell bindings.
281 PHP
283 phpize
284 Optional. Used to build the PHP bindings.
285 glib2
287 gobject-introspection
288 gjs Optional. Used to build and test the GObject bindings.
289 LUA Optional. Used to build the LUA bindings.
291 Erlang
293 erl_interface
294 Optional. Used to build the Erlang bindings.
295 golang ≥ 1.1.1
297 Optional. Used to build the Go bindings.
298 valgrind
300 Optional. For testing memory problems.
301 Perl "Sys::Virt"
303 Optional.
304 libvirt-python
306 Optional. For testing Python libvirt/libguestfs interactions.
307 Perl "Win::Hivex"
309 Optional. Used by the virt-win-reg(1) tool.
310 Perl "Pod::Usage"
312 Optional. Used by some Perl virt tools.
313 Perl "libintl"
315 Optional.
316 bash-completion
318 Optional. For tab-completion of commands in bash.
319 libtsk
321 Optional. Library for filesystem forensics analysis.
322 yara
324 Optional. Tool for categorizing files based on their content.
325
327 You will need to install additional dependencies "autoconf",
328 "automake", "gettext", OCaml findlib and po4a when building from git.
329 git clone https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs
331 cd libguestfs
332 ./autogen.sh
333 make
334
336 Tarballs are downloaded from http://download.libguestfs.org/. Stable
337 tarballs are signed with the GnuPG key for "rich@annexia.org", see
338 https://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?op=vindex&search=0x91738F73E1B768A0.
339 The fingerprint is "F777 4FB1 AD07 4A7E 8C87 67EA 9173 8F73 E1B7 68A0".
340 Download and unpack the tarball.
342 cd libguestfs-1.xx.yy
344 ./configure
345 make
346
348 DO NOT run the tests as root! Libguestfs can be built and tested as
349 non-root. Running the tests as root could even be dangerous, don't do
350 it.
351 To sanity check that the build worked, do:
353 make quickcheck
355 To run the basic tests, do:
357 make check
359 There are many more tests you can run. See guestfs-hacking(1) for
361 details.
362
364 DO NOT use "make install"! You'll end up with conflicting versions of
365 libguestfs installed, and this causes constant headaches for users.
366 See the next section for how to use the ./run script instead.
367 Distro packagers can use:
369 make INSTALLDIRS=vendor DESTDIR=[temp-build-dir] install
371
373 You can run guestfish(1), guestmount(1) and the virt tools without
374 needing to install them by using the ./run script in the top directory.
375 This script works by setting several environment variables.
376 For example:
378 ./run guestfish [usual guestfish args ...]
380 ./run virt-inspector [usual virt-inspector args ...]
382 The ./run script adds every libguestfs binary to the $PATH, so the
384 above examples run guestfish and virt-inspector from the build
385 directory (not the globally installed guestfish if there is one).
386 You can use the script from any directory. If you wanted to run your
388 own libguestfs-using program, then the following command will also
389 work:
390 /path/to/libguestfs/run ./my_program [...]
392 You can also run the C programs under valgrind like this:
394 ./run valgrind [valgrind opts...] virt-cat [virt-cat opts...]
396 or under gdb:
398 ./run gdb --args virt-cat [virt-cat opts...]
400 This also works with sudo (eg. if you need root access for libvirt or
402 to access a block device):
403 sudo ./run virt-cat -d LinuxGuest /etc/passwd
405 To set environment variables, you can either do:
407 LIBGUESTFS_HV=/my/qemu ./run guestfish
409 or:
411 ./run env LIBGUESTFS_HV=/my/qemu guestfish
413
415 Files in the top source directory that begin with the prefix local* are
416 ignored by git. These files can contain local configuration or scripts
417 that you need to build libguestfs.
418 I have a file called localconfigure which is a simple wrapper around
420 autogen.sh containing local configure customizations that I need. It
421 looks like this:
422 . localenv
424 ./autogen.sh \
425 -C \
426 --enable-werror \
427 "$@"
428 So I can use this to build libguestfs:
430 ./localconfigure && make
432 If there is a file in the top build directory called localenv, then it
434 will be sourced by "make". This file can contain any local environment
435 variables needed, eg. for skipping tests:
436 # Use an alternate python binary.
438 export PYTHON=python3
439 # Skip this test, it is broken.
440 export SKIP_TEST_BTRFS_FSCK=1
441 Note that localenv is included by the top Makefile (so it’s a Makefile
443 fragment). But if it is also sourced by your localconfigure script
444 then it is used as a shell script.
445
447 There are many "./configure" options. Use:
448 ./configure --help
450 to list them all. This section covers some of the more important ones.
452 --disable-appliance --disable-daemon
454 See "USING A PREBUILT BINARY APPLIANCE" below.
455 --disable-erlang
457 --disable-gobject
458 --disable-golang
459 --disable-haskell
460 --disable-lua
461 --disable-ocaml
462 --disable-perl
463 --disable-php
464 --disable-python
465 --disable-ruby
466 Disable specific language bindings, even if "./configure" finds all
467 the necessary libraries are installed so that they could be
468 compiled.
469 Note that disabling OCaml (bindings) or Perl will have the knock-on
471 effect of disabling parts of the test suite and some tools.
472 OCaml is required to build libguestfs and this requirement cannot
474 be removed. Using --disable-ocaml only disables the bindings and
475 OCaml tools.
476 --disable-fuse
478 Disable FUSE support in the API and the guestmount(1) tool.
479 --disable-gnulib-tests
481 On some platforms the GNUlib test suite can be flaky. This
482 disables it, since errors in the GNUlib test suite are often not
483 important.
484 --disable-static
486 Don’t build a static linked version of the libguestfs library.
487 --enable-install-daemon
489 Normally guestfsd(8) is not installed by "make install", since that
490 wouldn't be useful (instead it is "installed" inside the supermin
491 appliance). However if packagers are building "libguestfs live"
492 then they should use this option.
493 --enable-werror
495 This turns compiler warnings into errors (ie. "-Werror"). Use this
496 for development, especially when submitting patches. It should
497 generally not be used for production or distro builds.
498 --with-default-backend=libvirt
500 This controls the default method that libguestfs uses to run qemu
501 (see "BACKEND" in guestfs(3)). If not specified, the default
502 backend is "direct", which means libguestfs runs qemu directly.
503 Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) ≥ 7 use this flag to
505 change the default backend to "libvirt", because (especially in
506 RHEL) the policy is not to allow any program to run qemu except via
507 libvirt.
508 Note that despite this setting, all backends are built into
510 libguestfs, and you can override the backend at runtime by setting
511 the $LIBGUESTFS_BACKEND environment variable (or using API
512 methods).
513 --with-distro=REDHAT|DEBIAN|...
515 Libguestfs needs to know which Linux distro is in use so it can
516 choose package names for the appliance correctly (see for example
517 appliance/packagelist.in). It normally does this automatically.
518 However if you can building or packaging libguestfs on a new distro
520 then you can use --with-distro to specify that the distro is
521 similar to an existing one (eg. --with-distro=REDHAT if the distro
522 is a new Red Hat or CentOS derivative).
523 Note that if your distro is completely new then it may still
525 require upstream modifications.
526 --with-extra="distroname=version,libvirt,..."
528 --with-extra="local"
529 This option controls the "extra" field returned by
530 "guestfs_version" in guestfs(3) and also printed by virt tools'
531 --version option. It is a free text field, but a good idea is to
532 encode a comma-separated list of facts such as the distro name and
533 version, whether libvirt is the default backend, and anything else
534 that may help with debugging problems raised by users.
535 For custom and/or local builds, this can be set to "local" to
537 indicate this is not a distro build.
538 --without-libvirt
540 Compile libguestfs without libvirt support, even if libvirt
541 development libraries are installed.
542 --with-gtk=2
544 This option forces virt-p2v to be built against Gtk 2, which is
545 currently the most widely tested configuration.
546 --with-qemu="bin1 bin2 ..."
548 Provide an alternate qemu binary (or list of binaries). This can
549 be overridden at runtime by setting the "LIBGUESTFS_HV" environment
550 variable.
551 --with-supermin-packager-config=yum.conf
553 This passes the --packager-config option to supermin(1).
554 The most common use for this is to build the appliance using an
556 alternate repository (instead of using the installed
557 yum/dnf/apt/etc configuration to find and download packages). You
558 might need to use this if you want to build libguestfs without
559 having a network connection. Examples of using this can be found
560 in the Fedora "libguestfs.spec" file (see "BUILDING A PACKAGE FOR
561 FEDORA" below for resources).
562 --with-supermin-extra-options="--opt1 --opt2 ..."
564 Pass additional options to supermin(1). See appliance/make.sh.in
565 to understand precisely what this does.
566 PYTHON
568 This environment variable may be set to point to a python binary
569 (eg. "python3"). When "./configure" runs, it inspects this python
570 binary to find the version of Python, the location of Python
571 libraries and so on. See "BUILDING PYTHON 2 AND PYTHON 3 BINDINGS"
572 below.
573 SUPERMIN
575 This environment variable can be set to choose an alternative
576 supermin(1) binary. This might be used, for example, if you want
577 to use a newer upstream version of supermin than is packaged for
578 your distro, or if supermin is not packaged at all. On RHEL 7, you
579 must set "SUPERMIN=/usr/bin/supermin5" when compiling libguestfs.
580
582 A common problem is with broken or incompatible qemu releases.
583 Different versions of qemu have problems booting the appliance for
585 different reasons. This varies between versions of qemu, and Linux
586 distributions which add their own patches.
587 If you find a problem, you could try using your own qemu built from
589 source (qemu is very easy to build from source), with a "qemu wrapper".
590 See "QEMU WRAPPERS" in guestfs(3).
591 By default the configure script will look for qemu-kvm (KVM support).
593 KVM is much faster than using plain qemu.
594 You may also need to enable KVM support for non-root users, by
596 following these instructions:
597 http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/FAQ#How_can_I_use_kvm_with_a_non-privileged_user.3F
598 On some systems, this will work too:
600 chmod 0666 /dev/kvm
602 On some systems, the chmod will not survive a reboot, and you will need
604 to make edits to the udev configuration.
605
607 export CC=clang
608 ./configure
609 make
610
612 To understand what the libguestfs appliance means, see
613 guestfs-internals(1).
614 If you are using non-Linux, or a Linux distribution that does not have
616 supermin(1) support, or simply if you don't want to build your own
617 libguestfs appliance, then you can use one of the prebuilt binary
618 appliances that we supply:
619 http://libguestfs.org/download/binaries/appliance
620 Build libguestfs like this:
622 ./configure --disable-appliance --disable-daemon
624 make
625 Set $LIBGUESTFS_PATH to the path where you unpacked the appliance
627 tarball, eg:
628 export LIBGUESTFS_PATH=/usr/local/lib/guestfs/appliance
630 and run the libguestfs programs and virt tools in the normal way, eg.
632 using the ./run script (see above).
633
635 The ./configure script detects the currently installed version of
636 Python using whatever program is called "python" in the current $PATH.
637 Libguestfs will build Python 2 or Python 3 bindings as appropriate.
638 You can override this behaviour by specifying an alternate Python
640 binary, eg:
641 PYTHON=/usr/bin/python3 ./configure
643 To build parallel Python 2 and Python 3 bindings, you will need to
645 build libguestfs twice. The second time, you can disable all the other
646 bindings and tools and just build the Python bindings. See the Fedora
647 spec file (see below) for a complete example of how to do this.
648
650 The Fedora spec file is stored under:
651 http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/rpms/libguestfs.git/
652 Libguestfs is built in Fedora using the ordinary Fedora build system
654 (Koji).
655
657 Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) builds of libguestfs are heavily
658 patched. There are broadly two types of patches we apply:
659 · We disable many features that we do not wish to support for RHEL
661 customers. For example, the "libguestfs live" feature is disabled.
662 · We backport upstream features.
664 The patches we apply to RHEL releases are available publically in the
666 upstream git repository, in a branch called "rhel-x.y"
667 For example, the RHEL 7.3 patches are available here:
669 https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs/commits/rhel-7.3
670 The sources and spec files for RHEL versions of libguestfs are
672 available on https://git.centos.org/project/rpms, and see also
673 https://wiki.centos.org/Sources.
674
676 (This section only applies on the x86-64 architecture.)
677 Building a 32 bit virt-p2v (i686) binary improves compatibility with
679 older hardware. See virt-p2v-make-disk(1) for details. Although
680 virt-p2v is a simple Gtk application, it is not especially easy to
681 build just virt-p2v as a 32 bit application on a 64 bit host. Usually
682 the simplest way is to use a 32 bit chroot or even a 32 bit virtual
683 machine to build libguestfs.
684 On Fedora you can use the mock(1) tool. For example:
686 fedpkg mockbuild --root fedora-23-i386
688 This will result in a virt-v2v-*.i686.rpm file which can be unpacked to
690 extract the 32 bit virt-p2v binary.
691 The binary may be compressed to either p2v/virt-p2v.i686.xz, or
693 $libdir/virt-p2v/virt-p2v.i686.xz or
694 $VIRT_P2V_DATA_DIR/virt-p2v.i686.xz as appropriate. This enables the
695 virt-p2v-make-disk(1) --arch option.
696
698 guestfs(3), guestfs-examples(3), guestfs-hacking(1),
699 guestfs-internals(1), guestfs-performance(1), guestfs-release-notes(1),
700 guestfs-testing(1), libguestfs-test-tool(1),
701 libguestfs-make-fixed-appliance(1), http://libguestfs.org/.
702
704 Richard W.M. Jones ("rjones at redhat dot com")
705
707 Copyright (C) 2009-2019 Red Hat Inc.
708
710 This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
711 under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published
712 by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
713 (at your option) any later version.
714 This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
716 WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
717 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
718 Lesser General Public License for more details.
719 You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public
721 License along with this library; if not, write to the Free Software
722 Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA
723 02110-1301 USA
724
726 To get a list of bugs against libguestfs, use this link:
727 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/buglist.cgi?component=libguestfs&product=Virtualization+Tools
728 To report a new bug against libguestfs, use this link:
730 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/enter_bug.cgi?component=libguestfs&product=Virtualization+Tools
731 When reporting a bug, please supply:
733 · The version of libguestfs.
735 · Where you got libguestfs (eg. which Linux distro, compiled from
737 source, etc)
738 · Describe the bug accurately and give a way to reproduce it.
740 · Run libguestfs-test-tool(1) and paste the complete, unedited output
742 into the bug report.
743libguestfs-1.40.1 2019-01-17 guestfs-building(1)