libnbd-release-notes-1.8(1) LIBNBD libnbd-release-notes-1.8(1) # [NAME](#NAME) libnbd-release-notes-1.8 - release notes for libnbd 1.8 # [DESCRIPTION](#DESCRIPTION) These are the release notes for libnbd stable release 1.8. This describes the major changes since 1.6. libnbd 1.8.0 was released on **7 June 2021**. libnbd is now hosted on gitlab: https://listman.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2021-February/msg00021.html ## [Security](#Security) If you find a security issue, please read *SECURITY* in the source (online here: https://gitlab.com/nbdkit/libnbd/blob/master/SECURITY). To find out about previous security issues in libnbd, see [**libnbd-security**(3)](/man/os/libnbd/libnbd-security.3). There was one security bug found in libnbd during this release cycle. *CVE-2021-20286 denial of service when using *nbd\_set\_opt\_mode*(3)* See the full announcement here: https://listman.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2021-March/msg00092.html (Found and fixed by Eric Blake). ## [New APIs](#New_APIs) [**nbd\_get\_private\_data**(3)](/man/os/libnbd/nbd_get_private_data.3) [**nbd\_set\_private\_data**(3)](/man/os/libnbd/nbd_set_private_data.3) These calls allow you to store either an unsigned integer or a pointer in the handle for the application to use for its own purposes. [**nbd\_get\_uri**(3)](/man/os/libnbd/nbd_get_uri.3) This call constructs an NBD URI which can be used to connect back to the same server (using [**nbd\_connect\_uri**(3)](/man/os/libnbd/nbd_connect_uri.3) or from other tools that support the NBD URI standard). ## [Enhancements to existing APIs](#Enhancements_to_existing_APIs) Numeric IPv6 URIs (like "nbd://\[::1]/") are now supported. libnbd gives a better error message if the server backlog overflows (thanks Xin Long, Lukas Doktor, Eric Blake, Martin Kletzander). ## [New features](#New_features) Continuous integration (CI) tests now run on every commit and merge request to the upstream repository (Martin Kletzander). ## [Tools](#Tools) A great deal of work has been done to improve the performance of [**nbdcopy**(1)](/man/os/libnbd/nbdcopy.1) (Nir Soffer, Eric Blake). On Linux, nbdcopy now uses readahead when reading from files, and takes steps to preserve the host page cache. nbdcopy new *--request-size* option to allow controlling the size of requests made to NBD servers. Adjusting this can affect performance (Nir Soffer). nbdcopy now supports "null:" pseudo-target, where it discards the output. This is useful for benchmarking. nbdcopy new *-v* flag to enable libnbd and other debugging. [**nbdinfo**(1)](/man/os/libnbd/nbdinfo.1) *--list* (which lists all exports of a server) no longer exits early if one of the exports is inaccessible or there is a recoverable error (Eric Blake). nbdinfo now prints the URI of each export in the output making it easier to connect back to each export. [**nbdfuse**(1)](/man/os/libnbd/nbdfuse.1) is now multithreaded and supports issuing parallel NBD commands on a single connection as well as multi-conn, and other enhancements have been made. This resulted in around 50% performance improvement when tested with fio. nbdfuse now supports nbdcopy-style "\[ CMD ]", eg: nbdfuse dir/ramdisk \[ nbdkit memory 1G ] nbdfuse now supports trimming. Also it supports fast zeroing, but this requires a forthcoming kernel patch before it will work. nbdfuse sets the virtual file permissions appropriately if the NBD export is read-only. nbdfuse new *-v* flag to enable libnbd and other debugging. ## [Tests](#Tests) Added a test of interoperability with [**qemu-storage-daemon**(1)](/man/os/libnbd/qemu-storage-daemon.1). Note that qemu-storage-daemon was broken in qemu 6.0.0 so this test can fail unless you update to a fixed version (thanks Stefan Hajnoczi, Daniel Berrangé). Added a test of nbdcopy with TLS which was previously untested. Python code style tests are now opt-in using ./configure --enable-python-code-style More tests should now run on FreeBSD and not be skipped. nbdfuse tests now ensure that errors from NBD are transmitted through FUSE back to the local client. "MALLOC\_CHECK\_" and "MALLOC\_PERTURB\_" are only enabled when running the tests, not when running libnbd programs from the build directory. This makes it easier to do benchmarks. ## [Other improvements and bug fixes](#Other_improvements_and_bug_fixes) The minimum C compiler is now ISO C99 (previously ANSI C90). FUSE 3 (instead of FUSE 2) is now required to build nbdfuse. The library tries harder not to leak thread-local storage memory on dlclose or exit. (Because of the design of Linux it is not always possible to avoid this, especially in multithreaded programs.) Fix the progress bar in [**nbdcopy**(1)](/man/os/libnbd/nbdcopy.1). UTF-8 export names are now processed and displayed properly by [**nbdinfo**(1)](/man/os/libnbd/nbdinfo.1). The *--help* output of nbdcopy, nbdfuse and nbdinfo now displays a brief summary of all options and has some examples. The generator now only requires ocamlc, not ocamlfind (Abhay Raj Singh). Golang bindings now use and require golang modules. ## [Documentation](#Documentation) Document using libnbd with the Meson build system. Added Python examples. Add example of how to integrate libnbd with libev (Nir Soffer). # [SEE ALSO](#SEE_ALSO) [**libnbd**(3)](/man/os/libnbd/libnbd.3). # [AUTHORS](#AUTHORS) Eric Blake Richard W.M. Jones Martin Kletzander Nir Soffer # [COPYRIGHT](#COPYRIGHT) Copyright Red Hat # [LICENSE](#LICENSE) This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This library 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 Lesser General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License along with this library; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA 2026-10-11 libnbd-1.25.7 --- Document: libnbd-release-notes-1.8(1) from libnbd 1.25.7-r3 (Chainguard OS)