NAME

       nbdkit-release-notes-1.6 - release notes for nbdkit 1.6

DESCRIPTION

       These are the release notes for nbdkit stable release 1.6.  This describes the major
       changes since 1.4.

       nbdkit 1.6.0 was released on 28th August 2018.

   New features
       ·   You can now write plugins in the Lua scripting language, see nbdkit-lua-plugin(3).

       ·   nbdkit and common plugins are now "63 bit clean": the maximum disk size supported is
           2⁶³-1 bytes, and the core server and plugins now have additional tests to check this
           works, even on 32 bit machines.

       ·   Multiple improvements to the nbdkit-file-plugin(1) to make zeroing and trimming
           perform better, work correctly with block devices, and work on older Linux kernels
           [Nir Soffer, Eric Blake].

       ·   New nbdkit-pattern-plugin(1) generates a simple, fixed test pattern for testing nbdkit
           filters and NBD clients.

       ·   New nbdkit-truncate-filter(1) can: truncate or extend the size of plugins, or round up
           or down the size to next multiple of a power of 2.  Useful for NBD clients like qemu
           which can only handle NBD sizes which are a multiple of 512 bytes.

       ·   New nbdkit-error-filter(1) which can be used to inject errors into the protocol for
           testing how clients can handle and recover from errors.

       ·   New nbdkit-data-plugin(1) allows you to specify (small) disk images directly on the
           command line.

       ·   Enhanced error reporting in the Python plugin so full tracebacks from errors are now
           displayed instead of being lost as before.

       ·   "NBD_OPT_GO" now supported, so we can return errors when negotiating the export name.

       ·   Support for logging error messages to syslog.

       ·   nbdkit can now be compiled with Clang (as well as GCC).

       ·   nbdkit can now be compiled on FreeBSD.

       ·   nbdkit-vddk-plugin(1) is compiled unconditionally.  You no longer need to install the
           proprietary VDDK to compile it.

       ·   Debug messages now include the name of the filter when invoked from a filter context.

       ·   Debug flags (-D option) provides lightweight debugging for plugin authors.

   Acknowledgements
       Thanks to all who contributed, especially Nir Soffer and Eric Blake.

SEE ALSO

       nbdkit(1), https://www.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2018-August/msg00279.html.

AUTHORS

       Eric Blake

       Richard W.M. Jones

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright (C) 2018 Red Hat Inc.

LICENSE

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