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libguestfs is a set to virt tools and a library for viewing, editing and inspecting virtual machines and disk images.

In Fedora 17, libguestfs 1.17.x will be available (upgraded from 1.10 in Fedora 15 and 1.16 in Fedora 16).

Requirements

You will need a Fedora 17 machine. Having at least one guest will be very helpful.

You can test libguestfs inside an F17 virtual machine, but it will run a lot slower. For best performance, run the tests in F17 running on baremetal with VT extensions.

Installing libguestfs and the virt tools

As root, do:

# yum install libguestfs-tools

If you want to write libguestfs scripts or programs, install one of the language bindings, eg:

# yum install libguestfs-devel \
      perl-Sys-Guestfs python-libguestfs \
      ruby-libguestfs ocaml-libguestfs-devel

Basic checks

Check it's working by running this command (you don't need to be root):

$ libguestfs-test-tool

This command will run some simple tests and eventually print out:

===== TEST FINISHED OK =====

If it doesn't print this out, or seems to fail for some other reason, please file a bug including the complete, unedited output.

Now check how fast the appliance gets created:

$ time guestfish -a /dev/null run

Run this a few times so the cache is "hot". As a typical guide, you should see times like:

  • 3-6 seconds, on modern hardware with virtualization extensions