<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<!--
This file is autogenerated from FAQ.html.in
Do not edit this file. Changes will be lost.
-->
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="main.css" />
<link rel="SHORTCUT ICON" href="32favicon.png" />
<title>libvirt: FAQ</title>
<meta name="description" content="libvirt, virtualization, virtualization API" />
</head>
<body>
<div id="header">
<div id="headerLogo"></div>
<div id="headerSearch">
<form action="search.php" enctype="application/x-www-form-urlencoded" method="get"><div>
<input id="query" name="query" type="text" size="12" value="" />
<input id="submit" name="submit" type="submit" value="Search" />
</div></form>
</div>
</div>
<div id="body">
<div id="menu">
<ul class="l0"><li>
<div>
<a title="Front page of the libvirt website" class="inactive" href="index.html">Home</a>
</div>
</li><li>
<div>
<a title="Details of new features and bugs fixed in each release" class="inactive" href="news.html">News</a>
</div>
</li><li>
<div>
<a title="Get the latest source releases, binary builds and get access to the source repository" class="inactive" href="downloads.html">Downloads</a>
</div>
</li><li>
<div>
<a title="Information for users, administrators and developers" class="inactive" href="docs.html">Documentation</a>
</div>
</li><li>
<div>
<a title="User contributed content" class="inactive" href="http://wiki.libvirt.org">Wiki</a>
</div>
</li><li>
<div>
<span class="active">FAQ</span>
</div>
</li><li>
<div>
<a title="How and where to report bugs and request features" class="inactive" href="bugs.html">Bug reports</a>
</div>
</li><li>
<div>
<a title="How to contact the developers via email and IRC" class="inactive" href="contact.html">Contact</a>
</div>
</li><li>
<div>
<a title="Miscellaneous links of interest related to libvirt" class="inactive" href="relatedlinks.html">Related Links</a>
</div>
</li><li>
<div>
<a title="Overview of all content on the website" class="inactive" href="sitemap.html">Sitemap</a>
</div>
</li></ul>
</div>
<div id="content">
<h1>FAQ</h1>
<p>Table of Contents:</p>
<ul><li>
<a href="FAQ.html#License">License(s)</a>
</li><li>
<a href="FAQ.html#Installati">Installation</a>
</li><li>
<a href="FAQ.html#Compilatio">Compilation</a>
</li><li>
<a href="FAQ.html#Developer">Developer corner</a>
</li></ul>
<h3><a name="License" id="License">License</a>(s)</h3>
<ol><li>
<em>Licensing Terms for libvirt</em>
<p>libvirt is released under the <a href="http://www.opensource.org/licenses/lgpl-license.html">GNU Lesser
General Public License</a>, see the file COPYING.LIB in the distribution
for the precise wording. The only library that libvirt depends upon is
the Xen store access library which is also licenced under the LGPL.</p>
</li><li>
<em>Can I embed libvirt in a proprietary application ?</em>
<p>Yes. The LGPL allows you to embed libvirt into a proprietary
application. It would be graceful to send-back bug fixes and improvements
as patches for possible incorporation in the main development tree. It
will decrease your maintenance costs anyway if you do so.</p>
</li></ol>
<h3>
<a name="Installati" id="Installati">Installation</a>
</h3>
<ol><li><em>Where can I get libvirt</em> ?
<p>The original distribution comes from <a href="ftp://libvirt.org/libvirt/">ftp://libvirt.org/libvirt/</a>.</p>
</li><li>
<em>I can't install the libvirt/libvirt-devel RPM packages due to
failed dependencies</em>
<p>The most generic solution is to re-fetch the latest src.rpm , and
rebuild it locally with</p>
<p><code>rpm --rebuild libvirt-xxx.src.rpm</code>.</p>
<p>If everything goes well it will generate two binary rpm packages (one
providing the shared libs and virsh, and the other one, the -devel
package, providing includes, static libraries and scripts needed to build
applications with libvirt that you can install locally.</p>
<p>One can also rebuild the RPMs from a tarball:</p>
<p>
<code>rpmbuild -ta libdir-xxx.tar.gz</code>
</p>
<p>Or from a configured tree with:</p>
<p>
<code>make rpm</code>
</p>
</li><li>
<em>Failure to use the API for non-root users</em>
<p>Large parts of the API may only be accessible with root privileges,
however the read only access to the xenstore data doesnot have to be
forbidden to user, at least for monitoring purposes. If "virsh dominfo"
fails to run as an user, change the mode of the xenstore read-only socket
with:</p>
<p>
<code>chmod 666 /var/run/xenstored/socket_ro</code>
</p>
<p>and also make sure that the Xen Daemon is running correctly with local
HTTP server enabled, this is defined in
<code>/etc/xen/xend-config.sxp</code> which need the following line to be
enabled:</p>
<p>
<code>(xend-http-server yes)</code>
</p>
<p>If needed restart the xend daemon after making the change with the
following command run as root:</p>
<p>
<code>service xend restart</code>
</p>
</li></ol>
<h3>
<a name="Compilatio" id="Compilatio">Compilation</a>
</h3>
<ol><li>
<em>What is the process to compile libvirt ?</em>
<p>As most UNIX libraries libvirt follows the "standard":</p>
<p>
<code>gunzip -c libvirt-xxx.tar.gz | tar xvf -</code>
</p>
<p>
<code>cd libvirt-xxxx</code>
</p>
<p>
<code>./configure --help</code>
</p>
<p>to see the options, then the compilation/installation proper</p>
<p>
<code>./configure [possible options]</code>
</p>
<p>
<code>make</code>
</p>
<p>
<code>make install</code>
</p>
<p>At that point you may have to rerun ldconfig or a similar utility to
update your list of installed shared libs.</p>
</li><li>
<em>What other libraries are needed to compile/install libvirt ?</em>
<p>Libvirt requires libxenstore, which is usually provided by the xen
packages as well as the public headers to compile against libxenstore.</p>
</li><li>
<em>I use the CVS version and there is no configure script</em>
<p>The configure script (and other Makefiles) are generated. Use the
autogen.sh script to regenerate the configure script and Makefiles,
like:</p>
<p>
<code>./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr --disable-shared</code>
</p>
</li></ol>
<h3><a name="Developer" id="Developer">Developer</a> corner</h3>
<ol><li>
<em>Troubles compiling or linking programs using libvirt</em>
<p>To simplify the process of reusing the library, libvirt comes with
pkgconfig support, which can be used directly from autoconf support or
via the pkg-config command line tool, like:</p>
<p>
<code>pkg-config libvirt --libs</code>
</p>
</li></ol>
</div>
</div>
<div id="footer">
<p id="sponsor">
Sponsored by:<br /><a href="http://et.redhat.com/"><img src="et.png" alt="Project sponsored by Red Hat Emerging Technology" /></a></p>
</div>
</body>
</html>
