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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Daniel P. Berrangé 8aaed287f5 qemu: make 'xz' image compression viable by using -3
For managed save we can choose between various compression
methods. I randomly tested the 'xz' program on a 8 GB guest
and was surprised to have to wait > 50 minutes for it to
finish compressing, with 'xz' burning 100% cpu for the
entire time. Despite the impressive compression, this is
completely useless in the real world as it is far too long
to wait to save the VM.

The 'xz' binary defaults to '-6' optimization level which
aims for high compression, with moderate memory usage,
at the expense of speed.

This change switches it to use the '-3' optimization level
which is documented as being the one that optimizes speed
at expense of compression. Even with this, it will still
outperform all the other options in terms of compression
level. It is a little less than x4 faster than '-6' which
means it starts to be a viable choice to use 'xz' for
people who really want best compression.

The test results on a 1 GB, fairly freshly booted VM are
as follows

  format | save  | restore  size
  =======+=======+=============
  raw    |   05s |    1s  | 428 MB
  lzop   |   05s |    3s  | 160 MB
  gzip   |   29s |    5s  | 118 MB
  bz2    |   54s |   22s  | 114 MB
  xz     | 4m37s |   13s  |  86 MB
  xz -3  | 1m20s |   12s  |  95 MB

Based on this we can say

 * For moderate compression with no noticable loss in speed

       => use lzop

 * For high compression with moderate loss in speed

       => use gzip

 * For best compression with significant loss in speed

       => use xz

Reviewed-by: Michal Privoznik <mprivozn@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com>
2019-12-03 13:43:45 +00:00
.ctags.d maint: Add support for .ctags.d 2019-05-31 17:54:28 +02:00
.gnulib@1f6fb368c0 maint: Improve use of configmake.h on mingw 2019-08-19 17:04:05 -05:00
build-aux src: rewrite systemtap function generator in Python 2019-11-20 14:45:25 +00:00
ci ci: Stop using --workdir 2019-08-21 18:58:34 +02:00
docs maint: post-post-version-bump version bump to 6.0.0 2019-12-03 13:03:22 +01:00
examples suspend.c: remove unneeded cleanup label 2019-11-12 17:54:01 +01:00
gnulib maint: Fix VPATH build 2019-01-07 21:56:16 -06:00
include/libvirt util: introduce virbpf helpers 2019-11-15 12:58:00 +01:00
m4 Drop virAsprintf() 2019-11-12 16:15:59 +01:00
po bootstrap: remove regex module 2019-11-20 13:30:55 +01:00
scripts check-symfile: Use pythonesque string formatting instead of perl 2019-11-26 10:01:35 +01:00
src qemu: make 'xz' image compression viable by using -3 2019-12-03 13:43:45 +00:00
tests tests: improve build time for qemuxml2argvtest 2019-11-28 14:30:46 +00:00
tools nss: Don't fail on empty files 2019-11-28 15:37:41 +01:00
.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
.editorconfig Add .editorconfig 2019-09-06 12:47:46 +02:00
.gitignore src: remote: generate source files into build directory 2019-11-08 17:07:57 +01:00
.gitlab-ci.yml gitlab: Adapt to container name changes 2019-08-20 13:08:42 +02:00
.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 mailmap: Remove some duplicates 2019-06-07 13:18:08 +02:00
.travis.yml travis: explicitly require xcode 10.3 image for macOS 2019-11-28 09:59:39 +00:00
.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 gnulib: remove mk*temp modules 2019-11-20 13:31:21 +01:00
ChangeLog maint: Stop generating ChangeLog from git 2019-04-03 09:45:25 +02:00
config-post.h nss: only link to yajl library and nothing else 2019-08-07 16:54:02 +01:00
configure.ac maint: post-version bump version bump to 6.0.0 2019-12-03 12:42:28 +01:00
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
gitdm.config gitdm: add 'ibm' file 2019-10-18 17:32:52 +02:00
GNUmakefile build: merge all syntax-check logic into one file 2019-10-09 13:36:54 +01:00
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: Fix printing test-suite.log when make check fails 2019-12-03 12:50:16 +01:00
Makefile.am src: rewrite polkit ACL generator in Python 2019-11-20 14:45:25 +00:00
Makefile.nonreentrant Remove backslash alignment attempts 2017-11-03 13:24:12 +01:00
mingw-libvirt.spec.in build: probe for glib-2 library in configure 2019-10-14 10:54:42 +01:00
README Provide a useful README file 2017-05-22 17:01:37 +01:00
README-hacking build: mandate use of a build dir != src dir 2019-11-08 17:07:35 +01:00
README.md build: mandate use of a build dir != src dir 2019-11-08 17:07:35 +01:00
run.in util: activate directory override when used from library 2019-09-10 11:03:35 +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 2.0 (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, however, we mandate to have the build directory different than the source directory. For example, to build in a manner that is suitable for installing as root, use:

$ mkdir build && cd build
$ ../configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var
$ make
$ sudo make install

While to build & install as an unprivileged user

$ mkdir build && cd build
$ ../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