Libvirt provides a portable, long term stable C API for managing the virtualization technologies provided by many operating systems. It includes support for QEMU, KVM, Xen, LXC, bhyve, Virtuozzo, VMware vCenter and ESX, VMware Desktop, Hyper-V, VirtualBox and the POWER Hypervisor.
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Andrea Bolognani 29cd1877ac m4: Run QEMU under a distro-specific user when possible
Our current defaults are root:wheel on FreeBSD and macOS, root:root
everywhere else.

Looking at what downstream distributions actually do, we can see that
these defaults are overriden the vast majority of the time, with a
number of variations showing up in the wild:

  * qemu:qemu -> Used by CentOS, Fedora, Gentoo, OpenSUSE, RHEL
                 and... As it turns out, our very own spec file :)

  * libvirt-qemu:libvirt-qemu -> Used by Debian.

  * libvirt-qemu:kvm -> Used by Ubuntu.

  * nobody:nobody -> Used by Arch Linux.

Based on this information, we can do a better job at integrating with
downstream packages: if the distro-specific user and group already
exist on the system then we use them, and if not (or we're building
on an unknown OS) we just use root:root as we would have before.

This change makes it less likely that people building from source
will end up running their guests as root, which is a very desiderable
outcome from the security point of view.

Signed-off-by: Andrea Bolognani <abologna@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com>
2019-03-26 18:30:24 +01:00
.gnulib@8089c00979 maint: update gnulib for syntax-check on BSD 2019-01-07 13:54:07 -06:00
build-aux Fix header ifdef check for config-post.h in VPATH build 2018-12-14 14:08:51 +00:00
docs news: Document kernel requirements for virtual networks 2019-03-25 17:10:02 +01:00
examples configure: Remove --enable-test-coverage 2019-03-14 20:47:15 -04:00
gnulib maint: Fix VPATH build 2019-01-07 21:56:16 -06:00
include/libvirt snapshots: Add flag to guarantee topological sort 2019-03-12 20:38:53 -05:00
m4 m4: Run QEMU under a distro-specific user when possible 2019-03-26 18:30:24 +01:00
po po: refresh translations from zanata 2019-01-14 18:10:21 +00:00
src qemu_hotplug: don't shutdown net device until the guest has released it 2019-03-26 11:05:04 -04:00
tests qemufirmwaretest: Produce better message on error 2019-03-26 16:43:48 +01:00
tools virsh: Add 'echo --err' option 2019-03-25 09:02:02 -05:00
.color_coded.in Add color_coded support 2017-05-09 09:51:11 +02:00
.ctags ctags: Generate tags for headers, i.e. function prototypes 2018-09-18 14:21:33 +02:00
.dir-locals.el build: avoid tabs that failed syntax-check 2012-09-06 09:43:46 -06:00
.gitignore Drop support for "Red Hat" init scripts 2019-03-15 18:36:19 +01:00
.gitmodules gnulib: switch to use https:// instead of git:// protocol 2018-03-19 16:32:34 +00:00
.gitpublish git: add config file telling git-publish how to send patches 2018-04-23 11:36:09 +01:00
.mailmap AUTHORS: Add Katerina Koukiou 2018-07-17 17:01:19 +02:00
.travis.yml travis: Drop $DISTCHECK_CONFIGURE_FLAGS 2019-03-15 18:36:19 +01:00
.ycm_extra_conf.py.in Add YouCompleteMe support 2017-05-09 09:51:11 +02:00
ABOUT-NLS po: provide custom make rules for po file management 2018-04-19 10:35:58 +01:00
AUTHORS.in AUTHORS: Add Katerina Koukiou 2018-07-17 17:01:19 +02:00
autogen.sh po: provide custom make rules for po file management 2018-04-19 10:35:58 +01:00
bootstrap maint: update gnulib for syntax-check on BSD 2019-01-07 13:54:07 -06:00
bootstrap.conf bootstrap.conf: Fix LGPL information 2019-01-25 14:04:19 +01:00
cfg.mk conf: don't use "class" as name 2019-03-18 11:14:37 +03:00
ChangeLog-old Fix typos in src/* 2014-04-21 16:49:08 -06:00
config-post.h config-post: Remove duplicated 'undef WITH_CAPNG' 2019-01-21 14:44:47 +01:00
configure.ac configure: Remove --enable-test-coverage 2019-03-14 20:47:15 -04:00
COPYING maint: follow recommended practice for using LGPL 2013-05-20 14:15:21 -06:00
COPYING.LESSER maint: Remove control characters from LGPL license file 2015-09-25 09:16:24 +02:00
libvirt-admin.pc.in Add libvirt-admin library 2015-06-16 13:46:20 +02:00
libvirt-lxc.pc.in Add pkg-config files for libvirt-qemu & libvirt-lxc 2014-06-23 16:17:27 +01:00
libvirt-qemu.pc.in Add pkg-config files for libvirt-qemu & libvirt-lxc 2014-06-23 16:17:27 +01:00
libvirt.pc.in Add pkg-config files for libvirt-qemu & libvirt-lxc 2014-06-23 16:17:27 +01:00
libvirt.spec.in spec: Remove libvirt < 0.9.4 upgrade compat 2019-03-22 11:32:46 -04:00
Makefile.am configure: Remove --enable-test-coverage 2019-03-14 20:47:15 -04:00
Makefile.nonreentrant Remove backslash alignment attempts 2017-11-03 13:24:12 +01:00
mingw-libvirt.spec.in docs: Add schema for storage pool capabilities 2019-03-06 11:12:48 -05:00
README Provide a useful README file 2017-05-22 17:01:37 +01:00
README-hacking docs: update all GIT repo examples to use https:// protocol 2018-03-21 14:48:01 +00:00
README.md Add CII best practices badge 2017-10-13 16:08:01 +01:00
run.in run: Don't export unnecessary paths 2019-03-15 11:50:23 +01:00

Build Status CII Best Practices

Libvirt API for virtualization

Libvirt provides a portable, long term stable C API for managing the virtualization technologies provided by many operating systems. It includes support for QEMU, KVM, Xen, LXC, bhyve, Virtuozzo, VMware vCenter and ESX, VMware Desktop, Hyper-V, VirtualBox and the POWER Hypervisor.

For some of these hypervisors, it provides a stateful management daemon which runs on the virtualization host allowing access to the API both by non-privileged local users and remote users.

Layered packages provide bindings of the libvirt C API into other languages including Python, Perl, PHP, Go, Java, OCaml, as well as mappings into object systems such as GObject, CIM and SNMP.

Further information about the libvirt project can be found on the website:

https://libvirt.org

License

The libvirt C API is distributed under the terms of GNU Lesser General Public License, version 2.1 (or later). Some parts of the code that are not part of the C library may have the more restrictive GNU General Public License, version 2.1 (or later). See the files COPYING.LESSER and COPYING for full license terms & conditions.

Installation

Libvirt uses the GNU Autotools build system, so in general can be built and installed with the usual commands. For example, to build in a manner that is suitable for installing as root, use:

$ ./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var
$ make
$ sudo make install

While to build & install as an unprivileged user

$ ./configure --prefix=$HOME/usr
$ make
$ make install

The libvirt code relies on a large number of 3rd party libraries. These will be detected during execution of the configure script and a summary printed which lists any missing (optional) dependencies.

Contributing

The libvirt project welcomes contributions in many ways. For most components the best way to contribute is to send patches to the primary development mailing list. Further guidance on this can be found on the website:

https://libvirt.org/contribute.html

Contact

The libvirt project has two primary mailing lists:

Further details on contacting the project are available on the website:

https://libvirt.org/contact.html