Security

Eric Blake found a case where a server could cause libnbd to crash, although not in the normal libnbd configuration. For more information see the announcement here: https://listman.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2023-July/032035.html

Eric Blake found an issue with nbd_get_size(3) where a server that returns a size > (uint64_t)INT64_MAX and < (uint64_t)-1 would cause nbd_get_size to return a negative number (which is not -1 and so callers may or may not treat it as an error). While no client code in libnbd itself is affected by this, it could affect external clients. libnbd ≥ 1.16.5 now returns an error (-1) and sets nbd_get_errno to "EOVERFLOW" in this case. This was assigned CVE-2023-5215 (low severity). See the announcement here: https://listman.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2023-September/032711.html

During routine fuzzing we found several security problems which had been introduced during this development cycle and have subsequently been fixed. Stable (even numbered) releases of libnbd should not be vulnerable; do not use the development (odd numbered) releases in production.

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).

New APIs

nbd_block_status_64(3)

nbd_aio_block_status_64(3)

Make a 64 bit block status request, see "Protocol" below (Eric Blake).

nbd_block_status_filter(3)

nbd_aio_block_status_filter(3)

Send filtered block status command, see "Protocol" below (Eric Blake).

nbd_can_block_status_payload(3)

Find out if the server supports filtered block status command (Eric Blake).

nbd_set_request_extended_headers(3)

nbd_get_request_extended_headers(3)

nbd_get_extended_headers_negotiated(3)

nbd_opt_extended_headers(3)

nbd_aio_opt_extended_headers(3)

Set/get whether we request extended headers from the server, and find out if we negotiated extended headers, see "Protocol" below (Eric Blake).

Enhancements to existing APIs

"qemu:" meta-context constants (eg. "qemu:dirty-bitmap" as "LIBNBD_CONTEXT_QEMU_DIRTY_BITMAP") are now available through the C, Golang, OCaml and Python language bindings (Eric Blake).

nbd_shutdown(3) now works correctly when in opt mode (Eric Blake).

nbd_set_strict_mode(3) adds "LIBNBD_STRICT_AUTO_FLAG" which allows the client to test how servers behave when the payload length flag is adjusted (Eric Blake).

Protocol

libnbd now supports NBD 64 bit "extended headers" and extent sizes. In practice this allows certain requests such as zeroing very large sections of the disk to be implemented much more efficiently, with servers that support this (Eric Blake).

libnbd now supports filtered block status requests (Eric Blake).

Tools

nbdcopy(1), nbdinfo(1) and nbddump(1) have been expanded to use and report NBD 64 bit / extended header support when the server supports it (Eric Blake).

nbdinfo --has can be used as an alias for --can, eg. "nbdinfo --has structured-reply URI" (Eric Blake).

nbdinfo makes the export size output optional, for servers which send an oversized one (Eric Blake).

nbdcopy now supports "human sizes" for some parameters, eg. "nbdcopy --request-size=1M ...".

Language bindings

New Rust bindings. There is a basic API for ordinary use, and an asynch API implemented using Tokio. Rust ≥ 1.69 is required. (Tage Johansson, supported by sponsorship from Google Summer of Code 2023, additional review and fixes by Eric Blake).

OCaml 5 is now supported.

Golang 1.21 is now supported. The minimum version is now 1.17 (Eric Blake).

Use "gofmt" to format Golang bindings (Eric Blake).

Use "unsafe.Slice" when converting C arrays to Golang slices (Eric Blake).

All language bindings support NBD 64 bit / extended headers, and examples of how to use this feature are available (Eric Blake).

Tests

Fix a couple of race conditions in tests where we did not fully consume stdin in nbdkit-sh-plugin(3) pwrite method (Eric Blake).

Fuzzing now disables client-side strictness checks, enabling a wider range of inputs to be fuzzed (Eric Blake).

Other improvements and bug fixes

Consistently wrap source code at 80 columns (Laszlo Ersek).

Debug messages no longer print the very verbose state transitions inside the state machine as these are not usually useful. You can reenable this by defining "-DLIBNBD_STATE_VERBOSE=1" at compile time.

Completion ".callback" methods are now always called exactly once, and documentation is clearer on when this happens (Eric Blake).

Documentation

"podwrapper" has a new --replace parameter which makes it easier to use "AC_SUBST"-substitutions in documentation.

Build

Automake's "subdir-objects" option is now used (Eric Blake).

Multiple, ongoing fixes to the CI tests (Eric Blake).