Is there a fuse file system for this? I suspect that people who use GUI file system browsers would prefer to use their default (Nautilus?) rather than a custom application just for libguestfs.
Are there special features of libguestfs file system browsing that make it impossible to integrate with the desktop default?
The special features that we intend to include (in a future version, not this version):
displaying partition, LV, etc. “structure” of guest filesystems, including information like volume usage
resizing of guests, via integration with virt-resize
None of this is possible with Nautilus or similar, although as mentioned in the FAQ above you can of course mount filesystems from a guest on the host via FUSE using guestmount.
Should it be possible to compile this under cygwin so it can be used under Windows?
What about modifying it so it can also read raw partitions so I could use to to copy data out of physical linux partitions?
Looks good!
We had a bit of an effort some time ago (late 2009) to compile the library for Windows, and actually got it working. However I imagine that the Windows side of things has bit-rotted, so it’s almost certainly a lot of work to get it going on Windows again.
libguestfs can read raw partitions (and USB keys, CDs etc) already.
There have been multiple mentions that guestfs shouldn’t be used to view the contents of a harddisk unless it is shut down… Does that hold true even if I am merely reading out files? Or does it have to do with synchronization issues of the file system?
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Very cool.
A nautilus protocol for guestfish might be neat too.
Is there a fuse file system for this? I suspect that people who use GUI file system browsers would prefer to use their default (Nautilus?) rather than a custom application just for libguestfs.
Are there special features of libguestfs file system browsing that make it impossible to integrate with the desktop default?
I’ll answer both of these questions by pointing first to the FAQ:
http://libguestfs.org/FAQ.html#fuse
The special features that we intend to include (in a future version, not this version):
None of this is possible with Nautilus or similar, although as mentioned in the FAQ above you can of course mount filesystems from a guest on the host via FUSE using guestmount.
See also screenshots of Nautilus using libguestfs via FUSE.
Cool, I see fuse support has been around for a long time. Thanks for the links!
Looks very awesome!
Should it be possible to compile this under cygwin so it can be used under Windows?
What about modifying it so it can also read raw partitions so I could use to to copy data out of physical linux partitions?
Looks good!
We had a bit of an effort some time ago (late 2009) to compile the library for Windows, and actually got it working. However I imagine that the Windows side of things has bit-rotted, so it’s almost certainly a lot of work to get it going on Windows again.
libguestfs can read raw partitions (and USB keys, CDs etc) already.
Sound good.
Will try to see if I can get it working, and if I see that it’s not too much work I’ll probably work to get it committed.
What is it about the profeshnial application icons in OSS apps? (in the about box)
There have been multiple mentions that guestfs shouldn’t be used to view the contents of a harddisk unless it is shut down… Does that hold true even if I am merely reading out files? Or does it have to do with synchronization issues of the file system?
You must use read-only mode (eg. the
--rooption orreadonly:trueflag), otherwise you will definitely corrupt the guest’s disks if it is running.