5 guestfish - the libguestfs filesystem interactive shell
9 guestfish [--options] [commands]
11 guestfish -i libvirt-domain
13 guestfish -i disk-image(s)
17 =head2 From shell scripts
19 Create a new C</etc/motd> file in a guest:
24 mount /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 /
25 write_file /etc/motd "Hello users" 0
28 List the LVs in a guest:
36 =head2 On the command line
38 List the LVM PVs in a guest image:
40 guestfish add disk.img : run : pvs
42 Remove C</boot/grub/menu.lst> (in reality not such a great idea):
44 guestfish --add disk.img \
45 --mount /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 \
46 --mount /dev/sda1:/boot \
47 rm /boot/grub/menu.lst
49 =head2 As an interactive shell
53 Welcome to guestfish, the libguestfs filesystem interactive shell for
54 editing virtual machine filesystems.
56 Type: 'help' for help with commands
57 'quit' to quit the shell
61 =head2 As a script interpreter
63 #!/usr/bin/guestfish -f
64 alloc /tmp/output.img 10M
66 sfdisk /dev/sda 0 0 0 ,
71 eval `guestfish --listen`
72 guestfish --remote cmd
76 Guestfish is a shell and command-line tool for examining and modifying
77 virtual machine filesystems. It uses libguestfs and exposes all of
78 the functionality of the guestfs API, see L<guestfs(3)>.
86 Displays general help on options.
88 =item B<-h> | B<--cmd-help>
90 Lists all available guestfish commands.
92 =item B<-h cmd> | B<--cmd-help cmd>
94 Displays detailed help on a single command C<cmd>.
96 =item B<-a image> | B<--add image>
98 Add a block device or virtual machine image to the shell.
100 =item B<-D> | B<--no-dest-paths>
102 Don't tab-complete paths on the guest filesystem. It is useful to be
103 able to hit the tab key to complete paths on the guest filesystem, but
104 this causes extra "hidden" guestfs calls to be made, so this option is
105 here to allow this feature to be disabled.
107 =item B<-f file> | B<--file file>
109 Read commands from C<file>. To write pure guestfish
112 #!/usr/bin/guestfish -f
114 =item B<-i> | B<--inspector>
116 Run virt-inspector on the named libvirt domain or list of disk
117 images. If virt-inspector is available and if it can identify
118 the domain or disk images, then partitions will be mounted
119 correctly at start-up.
121 Typical usage is either:
125 (for an inactive libvirt domain called I<myguest>), or:
127 guestfish --ro -i myguest
129 (for active domains, readonly), or specify the block device directly:
131 guestfish -i /dev/Guests/MyGuest
133 You cannot use I<-a>, I<-m>, I<--listen> or I<--remote> in conjunction
134 with this option, and options other than I<--ro> might not behave
137 See also: L<virt-inspector(1)>.
141 Fork into the background and listen for remote commands. See section
142 I<REMOTE CONTROL GUESTFISH OVER A SOCKET> below.
144 =item B<-m dev[:mountpoint]> | B<--mount dev[:mountpoint]>
146 Mount the named partition or logical volume on the given mountpoint.
148 If the mountpoint is omitted, it defaults to C</>.
150 You have to mount something on C</> before most commands will work.
152 If any C<-m> or C<--mount> options are given, the guest is
153 automatically launched.
155 =item B<-n> | B<--no-sync>
157 Disable autosync. This is enabled by default. See the discussion
158 of autosync in the L<guestfs(3)> manpage.
160 =item B<--remote[=pid]>
162 Send remote commands to C<$GUESTFISH_PID> or C<pid>. See section
163 I<REMOTE CONTROL GUESTFISH OVER A SOCKET> below.
165 =item B<-r> | B<--ro>
167 This changes the C<-m> option so that mounts are done read-only
168 (see C<guestfs_mount_ro> in the L<guestfs(3)> manpage).
170 =item B<-v> | B<--verbose>
172 Enable very verbose messages. This is particularly useful if you find
175 =item B<-V> | B<--version>
177 Display the guestfish / libguestfs version number and exit.
181 Echo each command before executing it.
185 =head1 COMMANDS ON COMMAND LINE
187 Any additional (non-option) arguments are treated as commands to
190 Commands to execute should be separated by a colon (C<:>), where the
191 colon is a separate parameter. Thus:
193 guestfish cmd [args...] : cmd [args...] : cmd [args...] ...
195 If there are no additional arguments, then we enter a shell, either an
196 interactive shell with a prompt (if the input is a terminal) or a
197 non-interactive shell.
199 In either command line mode or non-interactive shell, the first
200 command that gives an error causes the whole shell to exit. In
201 interactive mode (with a prompt) if a command fails, you can continue
204 =head1 USING launch (OR run)
206 As with L<guestfs(3)>, you must first configure your guest by adding
207 disks, then launch it, then mount any disks you need, and finally
208 issue actions/commands. So the general order of the day is:
230 C<run> is a synonym for C<launch>. You must C<launch> (or C<run>)
231 your guest before mounting or performing any other commands.
233 The only exception is that if the C<-m> or C<--mount> option was
234 given, the guest is automatically run for you (simply because
235 guestfish can't mount the disks you asked for without doing this).
239 You can quote ordinary parameters using either single or double
242 add "file with a space.img"
248 A few commands require a list of strings to be passed. For these, use
249 a space-separated list, enclosed in quotes. For example:
251 vgcreate VG "/dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1"
253 =head1 WILDCARDS AND GLOBBING
255 Neither guestfish nor the underlying guestfs API performs
256 wildcard expansion (globbing) by default. So for example the
257 following will not do what you expect:
261 Assuming you don't have a directory literally called C</home/*>
262 then the above command will return an error.
264 To perform wildcard expansion, use the C<glob> command.
268 runs C<rm-rf> on each path that matches (ie. potentially running
269 the command many times), equivalent to:
275 C<glob> only works on simple guest paths and not on device names.
277 If you have several parameters, each containing a wildcard, then glob
278 will perform a cartesian product.
282 Any line which starts with a I<#> character is treated as a comment
283 and ignored. The I<#> can optionally be preceeded by whitespace,
284 but B<not> by a command. For example:
290 Blank lines are also ignored.
292 =head1 RUNNING COMMANDS LOCALLY
294 Any line which starts with a I<!> character is treated as a command
295 sent to the local shell (C</bin/sh> or whatever L<system(3)> uses).
299 tgz-out /remote local/remote-data.tar.gz
301 will create a directory C<local> on the host, and then export
302 the contents of C</remote> on the mounted filesystem to
303 C<local/remote-data.tar.gz>. (See C<tgz-out>).
307 Use C<command E<lt>spaceE<gt> | command> to pipe the output of the
308 first command (a guestfish command) to the second command (any host
309 command). For example:
311 cat /etc/passwd | awk -F: '$3 == 0 { print }'
313 (where C<cat> is the guestfish cat command, but C<awk> is the host awk
314 program). The above command would list all accounts in the guest
315 filesystem which have UID 0, ie. root accounts including backdoors.
318 hexdump /bin/ls | head
319 list-devices | tail -1
321 The space before the pipe symbol is required, any space after the pipe
322 symbol is optional. Everything after the pipe symbol is just passed
323 straight to the host shell, so it can contain redirections, globs and
324 anything else that makes sense on the host side.
326 To use a literal argument which begins with a pipe symbol, you have
331 =head1 EXIT ON ERROR BEHAVIOUR
333 By default, guestfish will ignore any errors when in interactive mode
334 (ie. taking commands from a human over a tty), and will exit on the
335 first error in non-interactive mode (scripts, commands given on the
338 If you prefix a command with a I<-> character, then that command will
339 not cause guestfish to exit, even if that (one) command returns an
342 =head1 REMOTE CONTROL GUESTFISH OVER A SOCKET
344 Guestfish can be remote-controlled over a socket. This is useful
345 particularly in shell scripts where you want to make several different
346 changes to a filesystem, but you don't want the overhead of starting
347 up a guestfish process each time.
349 Start a guestfish server process using:
351 eval `guestfish --listen`
353 and then send it commands by doing:
355 guestfish --remote cmd [...]
357 To cause the server to exit, send it the exit command:
359 guestfish --remote exit
361 Note that the server will normally exit if there is an error in a
362 command. You can change this in the usual way. See section I<EXIT ON
365 =head2 CONTROLLING MULTIPLE GUESTFISH PROCESSES
367 The C<eval> statement sets the environment variable C<$GUESTFISH_PID>,
368 which is how the C<--remote> option knows where to send the commands.
369 You can have several guestfish listener processes running using:
371 eval `guestfish --listen`
373 eval `guestfish --listen`
376 guestfish --remote=$pid1 cmd
377 guestfish --remote=$pid2 cmd
379 =head2 STANDARD OUTPUT DURING REMOTE CONTROL
381 Because of limitations in the C<eval> statement, stdout from the
382 listener is currently redirected to C</dev/null>.
386 =head2 REMOTE CONTROL DETAILS
388 Remote control happens over a Unix domain socket called
389 C</tmp/.guestfish-$UID/socket-$PID>, where C<$UID> is the effective
390 user ID of the process, and C<$PID> is the process ID of the server.
392 Guestfish client and server versions must match exactly.
394 =head1 GUESTFISH COMMANDS
396 The commands in this section are guestfish convenience commands, in
397 other words, they are not part of the L<guestfs(3)> API.
399 =head2 alloc | allocate
403 This creates an empty (zeroed) file of the given size, and then adds
404 so it can be further examined.
406 For more advanced image creation, see L<qemu-img(1)> utility.
408 Size can be specified (where C<nn> means a number):
412 =item C<nn> or C<nn>K or C<nn>KB
414 number of kilobytes, eg: C<1440> = standard 3.5in floppy
416 =item C<nn>M or C<nn>MB
420 =item C<nn>G or C<nn>GB
426 number of 512 byte sectors
434 This echos the parameters to the terminal.
436 =head2 edit | vi | emacs
440 This is used to edit a file. It downloads the file, edits it
441 locally using your editor, then uploads the result.
443 The editor is C<$EDITOR>. However if you use the alternate
444 commands C<vi> or C<emacs> you will get those corresponding
447 NOTE: This will not work reliably for large files
448 (> 2 MB) or binary files containing \0 bytes.
454 Expand wildcards in any paths in the args list, and run C<command>
455 repeatedly on each matching path.
457 See section WILDCARDS AND GLOBBING.
464 Without any parameter, this lists all commands. With a C<cmd>
465 parameter, this displays detailed help for a command.
471 Change the local directory, ie. the current directory of guestfish
474 Note that C<!cd> won't do what you might expect.
482 This is used to view a file.
484 The default viewer is C<$PAGER>. However if you use the alternate
485 command C<less> you will get the C<less> command specifically.
487 NOTE: This will not work reliably for large files
488 (> 2 MB) or binary files containing \0 bytes.
492 This exits guestfish. You can also use C<^D> key.
498 Close and reopen the libguestfs handle. It is not necessary to use
499 this normally, because the handle is closed properly when guestfish
500 exits. However this is occasionally useful for testing.
506 Run the command as usual, but print the elapsed time afterwards. This
507 can be useful for benchmarking operations.
513 =head1 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
519 The C<edit> command uses C<$EDITOR> as the editor. If not
524 Used with the I<--remote> option to specify the remote guestfish
525 process to control. See section I<REMOTE CONTROL GUESTFISH OVER A
530 If compiled with GNU readline support, then the command history
531 is saved in C<$HOME/.guestfish>
533 =item LIBGUESTFS_APPEND
535 Pass additional options to the guest kernel.
537 =item LIBGUESTFS_DEBUG
539 Set C<LIBGUESTFS_DEBUG=1> to enable verbose messages. This has the
540 same effect as using the B<-v> option.
542 =item LIBGUESTFS_MEMSIZE
544 Set the memory allocated to the qemu process, in megabytes. For
547 LIBGUESTFS_MEMSIZE=700
549 =item LIBGUESTFS_PATH
551 Set the path that guestfish uses to search for kernel and initrd.img.
552 See the discussion of paths in L<guestfs(3)>.
554 =item LIBGUESTFS_QEMU
556 Set the default qemu binary that libguestfs uses. If not set, then
557 the qemu which was found at compile time by the configure script is
562 The C<more> command uses C<$PAGER> as the pager. If not
563 set, it uses C<more>.
569 guestfish returns I<0> if the commands completed without error, or
570 I<1> if there was an error.
575 L<http://libguestfs.org/>.
579 Richard W.M. Jones (C<rjones at redhat dot com>)
583 Copyright (C) 2009 Red Hat Inc.
584 L<http://libguestfs.org/>
586 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
587 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
588 the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
589 (at your option) any later version.
591 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
592 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
593 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
594 GNU General Public License for more details.
596 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
597 along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
598 Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.