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 7cbd8c4230 meson: Improve nbdkit configurability
Currently, nbdkit support will automatically be enabled as long as
the pidfd_open(2) syscall is available. Optionally, libnbd is used
to generate more user-friendly error messages.

In theory this is all good, since use of nbdkit is supposed to be
transparent to the user. In practice, however, there is a problem:
if support for it is enabled at build time and the necessary
runtime components are installed, nbdkit will always be preferred,
with no way for the user to opt out.

This will arguably be fine in the long run, but right now none of
the platforms that we target ships with a SELinux policy that
allows libvirt to launch nbdkit, and the AppArmor policy that we
maintain ourselves hasn't been updated either.

So, in practice, as of today having nbdkit installed on the host
makes network disks completely unusable unless you're willing to
compromise the overall security of the system by disabling
SELinux/AppArmor.

In order to make the transition smoother, provide a convenient
way for users and distro packagers to disable nbdkit support at
compile time until SELinux and AppArmor are ready.

In the process, detection is completely overhauled. libnbd is
made mandatory when nbdkit support is enabled, since availability
across operating systems is comparable and offering users the
option to make error messages worse doesn't make a lot of sense;
we also make sure that an explicit request from the user to
enable/disable nbdkit support is either complied with, or results
in a build failure when that's not possible. Last but not least,
we avoid linking against libnbd when nbdkit support is disabled.

At the RPM level, we disable the feature when building against
anything older than Fedora 40, which still doesn't have the
necessary SELinux bits but will hopefully gain them by the time
it's released. We also allow nbdkit support to be disabled at
build time the same way as other optional features, that is, by
passing "--define '_without_nbdkit 1'" to rpmbuild. Finally, if
nbdkit support has been disabled, installing libvirt will no
longer drag it in as a (weak) dependency.

Signed-off-by: Andrea Bolognani <abologna@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Jonathon Jongsma <jjongsma@redhat.com>
2023-10-05 22:49:14 +02:00
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.gitlab/issue_templates gitlab: issue_template: Remove labelling commands 2022-06-01 12:27:10 +02:00
build-aux tests: add tests for nbdkit invocation 2023-09-19 14:28:50 -05:00
ci ci: add libnbd to build 2023-09-19 14:28:50 -05:00
docs docs: Go bindings release at the same time as the C library 2023-09-28 11:13:14 +02:00
examples examples: Report network metadata change event 2023-09-18 11:24:55 +02:00
include Define Network Metadata change event 2023-09-18 11:24:47 +02:00
po Translated using Weblate (Korean) 2023-10-01 04:35:53 +02:00
scripts systemd: Introduce common templates 2023-10-02 10:41:07 +02:00
src meson: Improve nbdkit configurability 2023-10-05 22:49:14 +02:00
subprojects Move src/keycodemapdb -> subprojects/keycodemapdb 2023-04-17 15:02:38 +02:00
tests virDomainMemoryDefValidate: Check for overlapping memory devices 2023-09-22 16:37:10 +02:00
tools virsh: Account for return values in virNodeGetFreePages 2023-10-03 09:16:55 +02:00
.ctags
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.editorconfig Add .editorconfig 2019-09-06 12:47:46 +02:00
.gitattributes Add .gitattributes file 2022-03-17 14:33:12 +01:00
.gitignore Revert ".gitignore: Ignore cscope and other *tags files" 2023-02-08 17:24:31 +01:00
.gitlab-ci.yml .gitlab-ci.yml: Convert the potfile job to the build.sh usage 2023-09-12 11:36:03 +02:00
.gitmodules Move src/keycodemapdb -> subprojects/keycodemapdb 2023-04-17 15:02:38 +02:00
.gitpublish gitpublish: Add suppresscc option 2023-10-02 10:11:12 +02:00
.mailmap mailmap: consolidate my email addresses 2020-10-06 12:05:09 +02:00
AUTHORS.rst.in AUTHORS: change my (Nikolay Shirokovskiy) email 2022-04-06 11:00:53 +03:00
config.h configure: bump min required CLang to 6.0 / XCode 10.0 2022-01-17 10:44:29 +00:00
configmake.h.in meson: generate configmake.h 2020-08-03 09:26:48 +02:00
CONTRIBUTING.rst meson: adjust our documentation to mention meson instead of autoconf 2020-08-03 09:27:09 +02:00
COPYING
COPYING.LESSER
gitdm.config gitdm: add 'ibm' file 2019-10-18 17:32:52 +02:00
libvirt-admin.pc.in Add libvirt-admin library 2015-06-16 13:46:20 +02:00
libvirt-lxc.pc.in
libvirt-qemu.pc.in
libvirt.pc.in
libvirt.spec.in meson: Improve nbdkit configurability 2023-10-05 22:49:14 +02:00
meson_options.txt meson: Improve nbdkit configurability 2023-10-05 22:49:14 +02:00
meson.build meson: Improve nbdkit configurability 2023-10-05 22:49:14 +02:00
NEWS.rst Post-release version bump to 9.9.0 2023-10-02 09:33:28 +02:00
README.rst README: drop Travis CI badge 2020-08-03 15:08:28 +02:00
run.in run: add ability to set selinux context 2023-08-23 14:22:36 -05:00

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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 2.0 (or later). See the files COPYING.LESSER and COPYING for full license terms & conditions.

Installation

Instructions on building and installing libvirt can be found on the website:

https://libvirt.org/compiling.html

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