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 Guestfish is a shell and command-line tool for examining and modifying
72 virtual machine filesystems. It uses libguestfs and exposes all of
73 the functionality of the guestfs API, see L<guestfs(3)>.
81 Displays general help on options.
83 =item B<-h> | B<--cmd-help>
85 Lists all available guestfish commands.
87 =item B<-h cmd> | B<--cmd-help cmd>
89 Displays detailed help on a single command C<cmd>.
91 =item B<-a image> | B<--add image>
93 Add a block device or virtual machine image to the shell.
95 =item B<-f file> | B<--file file>
97 Read commands from C<file>. To write pure guestfish
100 #!/usr/bin/guestfish -f
102 =item B<-i> | B<--inspector>
104 Run virt-inspector on the named libvirt domain or list of disk
105 images. If virt-inspector is available and if it can identify
106 the domain or disk images, then partitions will be mounted
107 correctly at start-up.
109 Typical usage is either:
113 (for an inactive libvirt domain called I<myguest>), or:
115 guestfish --ro -i myguest
117 (for active domains, readonly), or specify the block device directly:
119 guestfish -i /dev/Guests/MyGuest
121 You cannot use I<-a> or I<-m> in conjunction with this option, and
122 options other than I<--ro> might not behave correctly.
124 See also: L<virt-inspector(1)>.
126 =item B<-m dev[:mountpoint]> | B<--mount dev[:mountpoint]>
128 Mount the named partition or logical volume on the given mountpoint.
130 If the mountpoint is omitted, it defaults to C</>.
132 You have to mount something on C</> before most commands will work.
134 If any C<-m> or C<--mount> options are given, the guest is
135 automatically launched.
137 =item B<-n> | B<--no-sync>
139 Disable autosync. This is enabled by default. See the discussion
140 of autosync in the L<guestfs(3)> manpage.
142 =item B<-r> | B<--ro>
144 This changes the C<-m> option so that mounts are done read-only
145 (see C<guestfs_mount_ro> in the L<guestfs(3)> manpage).
147 =item B<-v> | B<--verbose>
149 Enable very verbose messages. This is particularly useful if you find
154 Echo each command before executing it.
156 =item B<-D> | B<--no-dest-paths>
158 Don't tab-complete paths on the guest filesystem. It is useful to be
159 able to hit the tab key to complete paths on the guest filesystem, but
160 this causes extra "hidden" guestfs calls to be made, so this option is
161 here to allow this feature to be disabled.
163 =item B<-V> | B<--version>
165 Display the guestfish / libguestfs version number and exit.
169 =head1 COMMANDS ON COMMAND LINE
171 Any additional (non-option) arguments are treated as commands to
174 Commands to execute should be separated by a colon (C<:>), where the
175 colon is a separate parameter. Thus:
177 guestfish cmd [args...] : cmd [args...] : cmd [args...] ...
179 If there are no additional arguments, then we enter a shell, either an
180 interactive shell with a prompt (if the input is a terminal) or a
181 non-interactive shell.
183 In either command line mode or non-interactive shell, the first
184 command that gives an error causes the whole shell to exit. In
185 interactive mode (with a prompt) if a command fails, you can continue
188 =head1 USING launch (OR run)
190 As with L<guestfs(3)>, you must first configure your guest by adding
191 disks, then launch it, then mount any disks you need, and finally
192 issue actions/commands. So the general order of the day is:
214 C<run> is a synonym for C<launch>. You must C<launch> (or C<run>)
215 your guest before mounting or performing any other commands.
217 The only exception is that if the C<-m> or C<--mount> option was
218 given, the guest is automatically run for you (simply because
219 guestfish can't mount the disks you asked for without doing this).
223 You can quote ordinary parameters using either single or double
226 add "file with a space.img"
232 A few commands require a list of strings to be passed. For these, use
233 a space-separated list, enclosed in quotes. For example:
235 vgcreate VG "/dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1"
237 =head1 WILDCARDS AND GLOBBING
239 Neither guestfish nor the underlying guestfs API performs
240 wildcard expansion (globbing) by default. So for example the
241 following will not do what you expect:
245 Assuming you don't have a directory literally called C</home/*>
246 then the above command will return an error.
248 To perform wildcard expansion, use the C<glob> command.
252 runs C<rm-rf> on each path that matches (ie. potentially running
253 the command many times), equivalent to:
259 C<glob> only works on simple guest paths and not on device names.
261 If you have several parameters, each containing a wildcard, then glob
262 will perform a cartesian product.
266 Any line which starts with a I<#> character is treated as a comment
267 and ignored. The I<#> can optionally be preceeded by whitespace,
268 but B<not> by a command. For example:
274 Blank lines are also ignored.
276 =head1 RUNNING COMMANDS LOCALLY
278 Any line which starts with a I<!> character is treated as a command
279 sent to the local shell (C</bin/sh> or whatever L<system(3)> uses).
283 tgz-out /remote local/remote-data.tar.gz
285 will create a directory C<local> on the host, and then export
286 the contents of C</remote> on the mounted filesystem to
287 C<local/remote-data.tar.gz>. (See C<tgz-out>).
291 Use C<command E<lt>spaceE<gt> | command> to pipe the output of the
292 first command (a guestfish command) to the second command (any host
293 command). For example:
295 cat /etc/passwd | awk -F: '$3 == 0 { print }'
297 (where C<cat> is the guestfish cat command, but C<awk> is the host awk
298 program). The above command would list all accounts in the guest
299 filesystem which have UID 0, ie. root accounts including backdoors.
302 hexdump /bin/ls | head
303 list-devices | tail -1
305 The space before the pipe symbol is required, any space after the pipe
306 symbol is optional. Everything after the pipe symbol is just passed
307 straight to the host shell, so it can contain redirections, globs and
308 anything else that makes sense on the host side.
310 To use a literal argument which begins with a pipe symbol, you have
315 =head1 EXIT ON ERROR BEHAVIOUR
317 By default, guestfish will ignore any errors when in interactive mode
318 (ie. taking commands from a human over a tty), and will exit on the
319 first error in non-interactive mode (scripts, commands given on the
322 If you prefix a command with a I<-> character, then that command will
323 not cause guestfish to exit, even if that (one) command returns an
326 =head1 GUESTFISH COMMANDS
328 The commands in this section are guestfish convenience commands, in
329 other words, they are not part of the L<guestfs(3)> API.
331 =head2 alloc | allocate
335 This creates an empty (zeroed) file of the given size, and then adds
336 so it can be further examined.
338 For more advanced image creation, see L<qemu-img(1)> utility.
340 Size can be specified (where C<nn> means a number):
344 =item C<nn> or C<nn>K or C<nn>KB
346 number of kilobytes, eg: C<1440> = standard 3.5in floppy
348 =item C<nn>M or C<nn>MB
352 =item C<nn>G or C<nn>GB
358 number of 512 byte sectors
366 This echos the parameters to the terminal.
368 =head2 edit | vi | emacs
372 This is used to edit a file. It downloads the file, edits it
373 locally using your editor, then uploads the result.
375 The editor is C<$EDITOR>. However if you use the alternate
376 commands C<vi> or C<emacs> you will get those corresponding
379 NOTE: This will not work reliably for large files
380 (> 2 MB) or binary files containing \0 bytes.
386 Expand wildcards in any paths in the args list, and run C<command>
387 repeatedly on each matching path.
389 See section WILDCARDS AND GLOBBING.
396 Without any parameter, this lists all commands. With a C<cmd>
397 parameter, this displays detailed help for a command.
403 Change the local directory, ie. the current directory of guestfish
406 Note that C<!cd> won't do what you might expect.
414 This is used to view a file.
416 The default viewer is C<$PAGER>. However if you use the alternate
417 command C<less> you will get the C<less> command specifically.
419 NOTE: This will not work reliably for large files
420 (> 2 MB) or binary files containing \0 bytes.
424 This exits guestfish. You can also use C<^D> key.
430 Close and reopen the libguestfs handle. It is not necessary to use
431 this normally, because the handle is closed properly when guestfish
432 exits. However this is occasionally useful for testing.
438 Run the command as usual, but print the elapsed time afterwards. This
439 can be useful for benchmarking operations.
445 =head1 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
451 The C<edit> command uses C<$EDITOR> as the editor. If not
456 If compiled with GNU readline support, then the command history
457 is saved in C<$HOME/.guestfish>
459 =item LIBGUESTFS_APPEND
461 Pass additional options to the guest kernel.
463 =item LIBGUESTFS_DEBUG
465 Set C<LIBGUESTFS_DEBUG=1> to enable verbose messages. This has the
466 same effect as using the B<-v> option.
468 =item LIBGUESTFS_MEMSIZE
470 Set the memory allocated to the qemu process, in megabytes. For
473 LIBGUESTFS_MEMSIZE=700
475 =item LIBGUESTFS_PATH
477 Set the path that guestfish uses to search for kernel and initrd.img.
478 See the discussion of paths in L<guestfs(3)>.
480 =item LIBGUESTFS_QEMU
482 Set the default qemu binary that libguestfs uses. If not set, then
483 the qemu which was found at compile time by the configure script is
488 The C<more> command uses C<$PAGER> as the pager. If not
489 set, it uses C<more>.
495 guestfish returns I<0> if the commands completed without error, or
496 I<1> if there was an error.
501 L<http://libguestfs.org/>.
505 Richard W.M. Jones (C<rjones at redhat dot com>)
509 Copyright (C) 2009 Red Hat Inc.
510 L<http://libguestfs.org/>
512 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
513 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
514 the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
515 (at your option) any later version.
517 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
518 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
519 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
520 GNU General Public License for more details.
522 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
523 along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
524 Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.