guestmount fails with missing 'suitable libguestfs supermin'

[mbrgm]

Issue description

guestmount fails with an error about a 'libguestfs supermin'. libguestfs-test-tool reports an error as well.

Steps to reproduce

• Try to mount an image using guestmount, which fails:

  guestmount -a image.qcow2 -i /mnt/
  

• Run libguestfs-test-tool. You should see the same error as above in the output:

  libguestfs: error: cannot find any suitable libguestfs supermin, fixed or old-style appliance on LIBGUESTFS_PATH (search path: /nix/store/viq4ikxacbjz01mnqvwswcl67vbxhqhw-libguestfs-1.38.0/lib64/guestfs)
  

Technical details

Output of nix-shell -p nix-info --run "nix-info -m"

 - system: `"x86_64-linux"`
 - host os: `Linux 4.14.23, NixOS, 18.03.git.a81bc41 (Impala)`
 - multi-user?: `no`
 - sandbox: `yes`
 - version: `nix-env (Nix) 2.0`
 - nixpkgs: `/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels/nixos/nixpkgs`

Output of libguestfs-test-tool

     ************************************************************
     *                    IMPORTANT NOTICE
     *
     * When reporting bugs, include the COMPLETE, UNEDITED
     * output below in your bug report.
     *
     ************************************************************
PATH=/nix/store/viq4ikxacbjz01mnqvwswcl67vbxhqhw-libguestfs-1.38.0/bin:/nix/store/0zv783sdimjn5jspqhd5wkk7433azkvy-hivex-1.3.14/bin:/nix/store/9lharz6d9i2zp92zl6w4v7ifks15m775-qemu-2.11.1/bin:/root/bin:/run/wrappers/bin:/etc/profiles/per-user/root/bin:/root/.nix-profile/bin:/nix/var/nix/profiles/default/bin:/run/current-system/sw/bin
XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/0
SELinux: sh: getenforce: command not found
guestfs_get_append: (null)
guestfs_get_autosync: 1
guestfs_get_backend: direct
guestfs_get_backend_settings: []
guestfs_get_cachedir: /var/tmp
guestfs_get_hv: /nix/store/9lharz6d9i2zp92zl6w4v7ifks15m775-qemu-2.11.1/bin/qemu-kvm
guestfs_get_memsize: 500
guestfs_get_network: 0
guestfs_get_path: /nix/store/viq4ikxacbjz01mnqvwswcl67vbxhqhw-libguestfs-1.38.0/lib64/guestfs
guestfs_get_pgroup: 0
guestfs_get_program: libguestfs-test-tool
guestfs_get_recovery_proc: 1
guestfs_get_smp: 1
guestfs_get_sockdir: /tmp
guestfs_get_tmpdir: /tmp
guestfs_get_trace: 0
guestfs_get_verbose: 1
host_cpu: x86_64
Launching appliance, timeout set to 600 seconds.
libguestfs: launch: program=libguestfs-test-tool
libguestfs: launch: version=1.38.0
libguestfs: launch: backend registered: unix
libguestfs: launch: backend registered: uml
libguestfs: launch: backend registered: libvirt
libguestfs: launch: backend registered: direct
libguestfs: launch: backend=direct
libguestfs: launch: tmpdir=/tmp/libguestfsI0vqbF
libguestfs: launch: umask=0022
libguestfs: launch: euid=0
libguestfs: error: cannot find any suitable libguestfs supermin, fixed or old-style appliance on LIBGUESTFS_PATH (search path: /nix/store/viq4ikxacbjz01mnqvwswcl67vbxhqhw-libguestfs-1.38.0/lib64/guestfs)
libguestfs: closing guestfs handle 0xe46670 (state 0)
libguestfs: command: run: rm
libguestfs: command: run: \ -rf /tmp/libguestfsI0vqbF

Ping @offlinehacker, @volth

[rwmjones]

supermin has to be ported to new Linux distros, it doesn't just work out of the box. See the ph_* modules under https://github.com/libguestfs/supermin/tree/master/src

If you just want it to work for now you can download a fixed appliance from http://download.libguestfs.org/binaries/appliance/ but that isn't a long term solution.

[mbrgm]

Yeah, I think that would help much!

[JohnAZoidberg]

For future reference: Currently (since ecb90ae) you have to use the package libguestfs-with-appliance if this error occurs.

[obadz]

It looks like github has a bad link for which pull request closed this issue and I don't remember doing it. Should we reopen?

[AkechiShiro]

@JohnAZoidberg Would it be possible to maybe patch the libguestfs package to show a custom error for Nixpkgs that appliance is missing ?
I may give this a try at some point.

Or is that a bad idea ? What do you think about this ?