guestfs-tools-release-notes-1.56(1) Virtualization Support
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 "" if Windows Group Policy was detected
inside a guest.
New "" element used to indicate the category of applications,
such as antivirus.
For XFS filesystems, new "" 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:
o The version of libguestfs.
o Where you got libguestfs (eg. which Linux distro, compiled from
source, etc)
o Describe the bug accurately and give a way to reproduce it.
o Run libguestfs-test-tool(1) and paste the complete, unedited output
into the bug report.
guestfs-tools-1.56.0 2026-07-11
guestfs-tools-release-notes-1.56(1)