guestfs-tools-release-notes-1.56(1)

NAME
guestfs-tools-release-notes - guestfs tools release Notes

RELEASE NOTES FOR GUESTFS TOOLS 1.56
These are the release notes for guestfs tools stable release 1.56. This describes the major changes since 1.54.

Guestfs tools 1.56.0 was released on 9 July 2026.

  virt-builder
Fix building of "debian-13" template (pulsarrush).

Use HTTPS to fetch templates (Xiang Hua Chen).

  virt-customize
Fix SELinux relabelling of "split /usr" guests.

Fix Windows Update and "pnputil /e" command in Windows guests after virtio-win drivers are injected (Cole Robinson).

When injecting virtio-win drivers in Windows guests, install blnsvr.exe (the balloon server) (Cole Robinson).

Fix installation of Windows Vista and Windows 2008 Server R1 drivers (Cole Robinson).

Remove the RHEL subscription-manager feature (Cole Robinson).

In firstboot scripts, print Windows "%USERNAME%" and "%USERDOMAIN%" which can be used to diagnose failures caused by insufficient permissions (Ming Xie).

Windows firstboot scripts may now exit with code 250, meaning that no reboot is required after the script. The next script in sequence runs immediately (Srihari Parimi).

On Windows, a sentinel file is created after all firstboot scripts have run, which may be used to indicate that firstboot has completed.

  virt-inspector
Add "<windows_group_policy/>" if Windows Group Policy was detected inside a guest.

New "<class>" element used to indicate the category of applications, such as antivirus.

For XFS filesystems, new "<type version="4|5">" to indicate XFSv4 or XFSv5. (This is also displayed in virt-filesystems(1) output.)

Add support for Kylin, NeoKylin and Anolis Linux (grass lu).

  virt-sysprep
Add a new operation to clean zsh history files (Fazle Arefin).

  Common changes
Some bash completion scripts that were no longer used by guestfs-tools were removed. Also new "./configure --with-bash-completion" and "./configure --with-bash-completion-dir" options were added (Christopher Byrne).

All tools taking a LUKS key file now allow a binary file to be used.

  Documentation
Use qemu option -cpu max in documentation about running virt-builder guests.

All information related to firstboot scripts was moved to and consolidated in "FIRSTBOOT" in virt-customize(1) (Srihari Parimi).

Removed a lot of obsolete documentation in the virt-sysprep(1) man page.

  Build changes
Fix Weblate (i18n) web hooks (Rafael Fontenelle).

Fixes for OCaml 5.

Add github CI (Cole Robinson).

Remove "AM_GNU_GETTEXT" macro and replace it with simpler "LIBINTL" checks (Cole Robinson).

Build Bison-based parser with -Wno-yacc to reduce yacc compatibility warnings that we don't care about (Cole Robinson).

Various build warnings were cleaned up (Cole Robinson).

"CFLAGS" is now prepended to the default, allowing default flags to be overridden. In addition -fPIC is added to the default flags (Cole Robinson).

Many memory leaks identified by Claude Code were fixed (shivanayak).

  Internals
OCaml quoted string literals ("{|..|}") are used throughout the code to make it easier to include verbatim scripts, code, regexps etc.

The sources for virt-cat(1), virt-filesystems(1), virt-log(1), virt-ls(1) and virt-tail(1) previously used a single source directory (cat/) for no particular reason. These were moved to separate directories.

  Bugs fixed

https://issues.redhat.com/browse/RHEL-100682
    Installing drivers on firstboot sometimes fail with PnP service not available [rhel-9.7]

https://issues.redhat.com/browse/RHEL-108174
    selinux-relabel doesn't work across filesystem boundaries (because setfiles doesn't) [rhel-9.7]

https://issues.redhat.com/browse/RHEL-125955
    virt-inspector detect if AV/GPOs are present in a VM [guestfs tools]

https://issues.redhat.com/browse/RHEL-144074
    Expose XFS version in virt-filesystems

https://issues.redhat.com/browse/RHEL-170706
    Virt-customize firstboot scripts (on Windows) should be able to skip reboots

https://issues.redhat.com/browse/RHEL-170708
    Document that exit code 249 means we retry the firstboot script (Windows only)

https://issues.redhat.com/browse/RHEL-171896
    virt-v2v failing with binary LUKS keys [guestfs-tools]

https://issues.redhat.com/browse/RHEL-94873
    Need to update uri to https:// for conf file in /etc/virt-builder/repos.d [rhel-10.1]

SEE ALSO
http://libguestfs.org/

AUTHORS

Christopher Byrne
Cole Robinson
Fazle Arefin
Fco. Javier F. Serrador
pulsarrush
Rafael Fontenelle
Richard W.M. Jones
Srihari Parimi
Temuri Doghonadze
Yuri Chornoivan

COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 2009-2026 Red Hat Inc.

LICENSE
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.

BUGS
To get a list of bugs against libguestfs, use this link: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/buglist.cgi?component=libguestfs&product=Virtualization+Tools

To report a new bug against libguestfs, use this link: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/enter_bug.cgi?component=libguestfs&product=Virtualization+Tools

When reporting a bug, please supply:

•   The version of libguestfs.

•   Where you got libguestfs (eg. which Linux distro, compiled from source, etc)

•   Describe the bug accurately and give a way to reproduce it.

•   Run libguestfs-test-tool(1) and paste the complete, unedited output into the bug report.