8.89. libguestfs

Security Fix

CVE-2013-4419

It was found that guestfish, which enables shell scripting and command line access to libguestfs, insecurely created the temporary directory used to store the network socket when started in server mode. A local attacker could use this flaw to intercept and modify other user's guestfish command, allowing them to perform arbitrary guestfish actions with the privileges of a different user, or use this flaw to obtain authentication credentials.

Bug Fixes

BZ#892291

Previously, when the guestmount utility failed to create a hard link, an incorrect error message was returned. Consequently, information about the true cause of error was not displayed. With this update, the error handling in guestmount has been fixed and correct messages are now displayed in the described case.

BZ#892834

When attempting to rename a symbolic link with the guestmount utility, guestmount followed the link instead of overwriting it. With this update, a guestfs_rename API has been added, which allows guestmount to rename target files correctly.

BZ#908255

Downloading a directory using the guestfs_download API or the guestfish download command is not allowed. However libguestfs did not return an error in such case and lost protocol synchronization instead. With this update, libguestfs now tests if the download source is a directory and returns an error message if it is.

BZ#909666

Under certain circumstances, long-running libguestfs API calls, which generated progress messages, caused libguestfs to terminate unexpectedly due to a stack overflow. The underlying source code has been modified to handle this case and the stack overflow no longer occurs.

BZ#971090

Prior to this update, the libguestfs inspection did not detect a Microsoft Windows guest that used a non-standard systemroot path. With this update, libguestfs has been modified to use the contents of the Windows boot.ini file to find the systemroot path. As a result, Windows guests are detected properly even if they use non-standard systemroot paths.

BZ#971326

Previously, libguestfs did not resize a Microsoft Windows NTFS file system when the target size was not explicitly specified. With this update, libguestfs has been modified to establish this size automatically from the target storage device. As a result, NTFS file systems can now be resized even without specifying the target size.

BZ#975753

The virt-resize fails on Windows guests that are in an inconsistent state. This update adds the description of this problem to the guestfs(3) man page.

BZ#975760

If the iface parameter was used when adding a drive, libguestfs entered an infinite loop. With this update, libguestfs has been fixed to process iface parameters correctly, thus preventing the hang.

BZ#980358

Calling the guestfs_filesystem_available(g,"xfs") function could be evaluated as true even if certain XFS functions were not available. This problem has been documented in the guestfs(3) man page.

BZ#980372

Prior to this update, the hivex-commit command with a relative path parameter wrote to a location inaccessible to users. This command has been modified to require an absolute path or a NULL path that overwrites the original. An error message is now displayed if a relative path is passed to hivex-commit.

BZ#985269

The syntax for setting Access Control Lists (ACLs) with libguestfs is now documented in the guestfs(3) man page.

BZ#989352

When libguestfs was used to read the capabilities of a file that had no capabilities set, libguestfs returned an error. The guestfs_cap_get_file() function that is responsible for retrieving the file capabilities has been modified to return an empty string in the described case.

BZ#996039

Under certain circumstances, using the guestfish command with both --remote and --add options can have unexpected results. This behavior has been documented in the guestfish(1) man page.

BZ#996825

Previously, when using the guestfish --remote command, the following message was displayed:

libguestfs: error: waitpid (qemu): No child processes

With this update, this unnecessary message is no longer displayed.

BZ#998108

Previously, when the libguestfs package was used on systems under heavy load, messages about "unstable clocks" appeared in the debugging output. With this update, libguestfs has been modified to check if the kvmclock kernel feature is enabled, thus reducing the aforementioned message output.

BZ#1000122

Prior to this update, using the guestfs_sh or sh command before mounting a disk caused the guestfish utility to terminate with a segmentation fault. With this update, guestfish has been modified to verify if a file system is mounted before executing these commands, and if not, an error message is displayed. As a result, guestfish no longer crashes in the aforementioned scenario.