New localPtr attribute for "ip" element in network XML

qemu: Support QEMU group I/O throttling

Add the capability to allow group I/O throttling via a new domain <disk> <iotune> subelement "group_name" to allow sharing I/O throttling quota between multiple drives.

nss: Introduce libvirt_guest

New libvirt_guest nss module that translates libvirt guest names into IP addresses.

daemon: Add support for runtime logging settings adjustment

Logging-related settings like log outputs and filters can now be adjusted during runtime using the admin interface without the necessity of the daemon's restart.

storage: Add virStorageVolInfoFlags API

Add the API to support using the VIR_STORAGE_VOL_GET_PHYSICAL flag in order to return the host physical size in bytes of the image container in the allocation field of the _virStorageVolInfo structure. The --physical flag has been added to the virsh vol-info command to access the data.

libxl: Implement virDomainGetMaxVcpus API

storage: Add overwrite flag checking for logical pool

Add support for the OVERWRITE flags for the logical storage backend including checking for existing data on the target volumes when building a new logical pool on target volume(s).

perf: Add more perf statistics

Add support to get the count of branch instructions executed, branch misses, bus cycles, stalled frontend cpu cycles, stalled backend cpu cycles, and ref cpu cycles by applications running on the platform.

conf: Display <physical> for volume xml

Add a display of the <physical> size of a disk volume in the output of the volume XML.

qemu: Use virtio-pci by default for aarch64 mach-virt guests

virtio-pci provides several advantages over virtio-mmio, such as the ability to hotplug devices and improved performance. While opting in to virtio-pci has been possible for a while, newly-defined guests will now use it automatically.

vbox: remove support for VirtualBox 3.x and older

Those old VirtualBox versions have been unsupported by upstream for a long time and the API of 4.0 and newer has diverged enough to require code abstractions to handle differences. Removing support for those old versions drops lots of code from the driver and simplifies the logic to ease implementation of new features going forward.

virsh: pool-info: introduce option --bytes

Add option --bytes to virsh pool-info in order ti allow display of units in bytes rather than default of human readable output.

scsi: Add parent wwnn/wwpn or fabric capability for createVport

Improve the algorithm searching for the parent scsi_host device for vHBA/NPIV scsi_host creation. Rather than supplying the "parent" by name, it's now possible to define the parent by it's wwnn/wwpn or fabric_wwn in the node device create XML or the storage pool XML.

qemu: Correct GetBlockInfo values

For an active domain, correct the physical value provided for a raw sparse file backed storage and the allocation value provided for a qcow2 file backed storage that hasn't yet been opened on the domain.

qemu: Make virtio console usable on ppc64 guests

The chardev detection code has been improved and can now handle this configuration properly.

qemu: Enable mount namespace

To avoid funny races with udev relabelling devices under our hands and to enhance security, libvirt now spawns each qemu process with its own /dev.

storage: Fix implementation of no-overwrite for file system backend

Fix file system storage backend implementation of the OVERWRITE flags to be consistent between code and documentation. Add checks to ensure that when building a new file system on a target volume that there is not something already on the disk in a format that libvirt can recognize.

qemu: Create hugepage path on per domain basis

Historically, all hugepage enabled domains shared the same path under hugetlbfs. This left libvirt unable to correctly set security labels on it. With this release, however, each domain is put into a separate path which is also correctly labeled.

conf: Reject domains with duplicate drive addresses

Reject duplicate drive addresses for disks and hostdevs at domain definition.

libxl: reverse defaults on HVM net device attach

Fixes network interface attach for HVM domains when no model is specified. Emulated hotplug isn't yet supported and hence we should default to the general working scenario.

libxl: always enable pae for x86_64 HVM

By default pae is disabled in libxl. Without an explicit <pae/> setting in the domain <features> configuration, an x86_64 HVM domain would be get an i686 environment. pae should always be enabled for x86_64 HVM domains.

shmem: Add support for additional models

The shmem device can now utilize QEMU's ivshmem-plain and ivshmem-doorbell, more modern versions of ivshmem.

vbox: Add VirtualBox 5.1 support

libssh: New transport

The new libssh transport allows one to connect to a running libvirtd via SSH, using the libssh library; for example: qemu+libssh://server/system.

vhost-scsi: Add support scsi_host hostdev passthrough

Add the capability to pass through a scsi_host HBA and the associated LUNs to the guest.

qemu: Users can now enable debug logging for native gluster volumes in qemu using the "gluster_debug_level" option in qemu.conf

memory hotplug: Slot numbers for memory devices are now automatically allocated and thus persistent. In addition slot numbers can be specified without providing a base address, which simplifies user configuration

qemu: Express devices will be placed on PCIe bus by default

For machine types that use a PCI Express root bus (e.g. x86_64/Q35 and aarch64/virt), any unaddressed PCI device that is an Express device (all virtio-1.0 devices, e1000e, nec-xhci, vfio assigned devices) will be placed on an Express controller (i.e. a pcie-root-port) instead of a legacy PCI controller (i.e. pci-bridge) with the root ports added as needed.

docs: Better documentation for migration APIs and flags

vbox: Address thread safety issues

virsh: Add support for passing an alternative persistent XML to migrate command

vhostuser: Allow hotplug of multiqueue devices

NEWS: Switch to an improved format

List user-visible changes instead of single commits for a better high-level overview of differences between libvirt releases.

website: Modernize layout and branding

The libvirt website looked very cluttered and outdated; it has now been completely overhauled, resulting in a design that's better organized and more pleasant to look at.

vz: Fix migration in P2P mode

Forbid newline character in names of some libvirt objects

Fix compilation on macOS