1virt-inspector(1) Virtualization Support virt-inspector(1)
2
6 virt-inspector - Display operating system version and other information
7 about a virtual machine
8
10 virt-inspector [--options] -d domname
11 virt-inspector [--options] -a disk.img [-a disk.img ...]
13 Old-style:
15 virt-inspector domname
17 virt-inspector disk.img [disk.img ...]
19
21 virt-inspector examines a virtual machine or disk image and tries to
22 determine the version of the operating system and other information
23 about the virtual machine.
24 Virt-inspector produces XML output for feeding into other programs.
26 In the normal usage, use "virt-inspector -d domname" where "domname" is
28 the libvirt domain (see: "virsh list --all").
29 You can also run virt-inspector directly on disk images from a single
31 virtual machine. Use "virt-inspector -a disk.img". In rare cases a
32 domain has several block devices, in which case you should list several
33 -a options one after another, with the first corresponding to the
34 guest’s /dev/sda, the second to the guest’s /dev/sdb and so on.
35 You can also run virt-inspector on install disks, live CDs, bootable
37 USB keys and similar.
38 Virt-inspector can only inspect and report upon one domain at a time.
40 To inspect several virtual machines, you have to run virt-inspector
41 several times (for example, from a shell script for-loop).
42 Because virt-inspector needs direct access to guest images, it won’t
44 normally work over remote libvirt connections.
45 All of the information available from virt-inspector is also available
47 through the core libguestfs inspection API (see "INSPECTION" in
48 guestfs(3)). The same information can also be fetched using guestfish
49 or via libguestfs bindings in many programming languages (see "GETTING
50 INSPECTION DATA FROM THE LIBGUESTFS API").
51
53 --help
54 Display brief help.
55 -a file
57 --add file
58 Add file which should be a disk image from a virtual machine. If
59 the virtual machine has multiple block devices, you must supply all
60 of them with separate -a options.
61 The format of the disk image is auto-detected. To override this
63 and force a particular format use the --format=.. option.
64 -a URI
66 --add URI
67 Add a remote disk. See "ADDING REMOTE STORAGE" in guestfish(1).
68 -c URI
70 --connect URI
71 If using libvirt, connect to the given URI. If omitted, then we
72 connect to the default libvirt hypervisor.
73 Libvirt is only used if you specify a "domname" on the command
75 line. If you specify guest block devices directly (-a), then
76 libvirt is not used at all.
77 -d guest
79 --domain guest
80 Add all the disks from the named libvirt guest. Domain UUIDs can
81 be used instead of names.
82 --echo-keys
84 When prompting for keys and passphrases, virt-inspector normally
85 turns echoing off so you cannot see what you are typing. If you
86 are not worried about Tempest attacks and there is no one else in
87 the room you can specify this flag to see what you are typing.
88 --format=raw|qcow2|..
90 --format
91 Specify the format of disk images given on the command line. If
92 this is omitted then the format is autodetected from the content of
93 the disk image.
94 If disk images are requested from libvirt, then this program asks
96 libvirt for this information. In this case, the value of the
97 format parameter is ignored.
98 If working with untrusted raw-format guest disk images, you should
100 ensure the format is always specified.
101 --keys-from-stdin
103 Read key or passphrase parameters from stdin. The default is to
104 try to read passphrases from the user by opening /dev/tty.
105 --no-applications
107 By default the output of virt-inspector includes the list of all
108 the applications installed in the guest, if available.
109 Specify this option to disable this part of the resulting XML.
111 --no-icon
113 By default the output of virt-inspector includes the icon of the
114 guest, if available (see "icon").
115 Specify this option to disable this part of the resulting XML.
117 -v
119 --verbose
120 Enable verbose messages for debugging.
121 -V
123 --version
124 Display version number and exit.
125 -x Enable tracing of libguestfs API calls.
127 --xpath query
129 Perform an XPath query on the XML on stdin, and print the result on
130 stdout. In this mode virt-inspector simply runs an XPath query;
131 all other inspection functions are disabled. See "XPATH QUERIES"
132 below for some examples.
133
135 Previous versions of virt-inspector allowed you to write either:
136 virt-inspector disk.img [disk.img ...]
138 or
140 virt-inspector guestname
142 whereas in this version you should use -a or -d respectively to avoid
144 the confusing case where a disk image might have the same name as a
145 guest.
146 For compatibility the old style is still supported.
148
150 The virt-inspector XML is described precisely in a RELAX NG schema file
151 virt-inspector.rng which is supplied with libguestfs. This section is
152 just an overview.
153 The top-level element is <operatingsystems>, and it contains one or
155 more <operatingsystem> elements. You would only see more than one
156 <operatingsystem> element if the virtual machine is multi-boot, which
157 is vanishingly rare in real world VMs.
158 <operatingsystem>
160 In the <operatingsystem> tag are various optional fields that describe
161 the operating system, its architecture, the descriptive "product name"
162 string, the type of OS and so on, as in this example:
163 <operatingsystems>
165 <operatingsystem>
166 <root>/dev/sda2</root>
167 <name>windows</name>
168 <arch>i386</arch>
169 <distro>windows</distro>
170 <product_name>Windows 7 Enterprise</product_name>
171 <product_variant>Client</product_variant>
172 <major_version>6</major_version>
173 <minor_version>1</minor_version>
174 <windows_systemroot>/Windows</windows_systemroot>
175 In brief, <name> is the class of operating system (something like
177 "linux" or "windows"), <distro> is the distribution (eg. "fedora" but
178 many other distros are recognized) and <arch> is the guest
179 architecture. The other fields are fairly self-explanatory, but
180 because these fields are taken directly from the libguestfs inspection
181 API you can find precise information from "INSPECTION" in guestfs(3).
182 The <root> element is the root filesystem device, but from the point of
184 view of libguestfs (block devices may have completely different names
185 inside the VM itself).
186 <mountpoints>
188 Un*x-like guests typically have multiple filesystems which are mounted
189 at various mountpoints, and these are described in the <mountpoints>
190 element which looks like this:
191 <operatingsystems>
193 <operatingsystem>
194 ...
195 <mountpoints>
196 <mountpoint dev="/dev/vg_f13x64/lv_root">/</mountpoint>
197 <mountpoint dev="/dev/sda1">/boot</mountpoint>
198 </mountpoints>
199 As with <root>, devices are from the point of view of libguestfs, and
201 may have completely different names inside the guest. Only mountable
202 filesystems appear in this list, not things like swap devices.
203 <filesystems>
205 <filesystems> is like <mountpoints> but covers all filesystems
206 belonging to the guest, including swap and empty partitions. (In the
207 rare case of a multi-boot guest, it covers filesystems belonging to
208 this OS or shared with this OS and other OSes).
209 You might see something like this:
211 <operatingsystems>
213 <operatingsystem>
214 ...
215 <filesystems>
216 <filesystem dev="/dev/vg_f13x64/lv_root">
217 <type>ext4</type>
218 <label>Fedora-13-x86_64</label>
219 <uuid>e6a4db1e-15c2-477b-ac2a-699181c396aa</uuid>
220 </filesystem>
221 The optional elements within <filesystem> are the filesystem type, the
223 label, and the UUID.
224 <applications>
226 The related elements <package_format>, <package_management> and
227 <applications> describe applications installed in the virtual machine.
228 <package_format>, if present, describes the packaging system used.
230 Typical values would be "rpm" and "deb".
231 <package_management>, if present, describes the package manager.
233 Typical values include "yum", "up2date" and "apt"
234 <applications> lists the packages or applications installed.
236 <operatingsystems>
238 <operatingsystem>
239 ...
240 <applications>
241 <application>
242 <name>coreutils</name>
243 <version>8.5</version>
244 <release>1</release>
245 </application>
246 The version and release fields may not be available for some types
248 guests. Other fields are possible, see
249 "guestfs_inspect_list_applications" in guestfs(3).
250 <drive_mappings>
252 For operating systems like Windows which use drive letters, virt-
253 inspector is able to find out how drive letters map to filesystems.
254 <operatingsystems>
256 <operatingsystem>
257 ...
258 <drive_mappings>
259 <drive_mapping name="C">/dev/sda2</drive_mapping>
260 <drive_mapping name="E">/dev/sdb1</drive_mapping>
261 </drive_mappings>
262 In the example above, drive C maps to the filesystem on the second
264 partition on the first disk, and drive E maps to the filesystem on the
265 first partition on the second disk.
266 Note that this only covers permanent local filesystem mappings, not
268 things like network shares. Furthermore NTFS volume mount points may
269 not be listed here.
270 <icon>
272 Virt-inspector is sometimes able to extract an icon or logo for the
273 guest. The icon is returned as base64-encoded PNG data. Note that the
274 icon can be very large and high quality.
275 <operatingsystems>
277 <operatingsystem>
278 ...
279 <icon>
280 iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAGAAAABg[.......]
281 [... many lines of base64 data ...]
282 </icon>
283 To display the icon, you have to extract it and convert the base64 data
285 back to a binary file. Use an XPath query or simply an editor to
286 extract the data, then use the coreutils base64(1) program to do the
287 conversion back to a PNG file:
288 base64 -i -d < icon.data > icon.png
290
292 Virt-inspector includes built in support for running XPath queries.
293 The reason for including XPath support directly in virt-inspector is
294 simply that there are no good and widely available command line
295 programs that can do XPath queries. The only good one is xmlstarlet(1)
296 and that is not available on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
297 To perform an XPath query, use the --xpath option. Note that in this
299 mode, virt-inspector simply reads XML from stdin and outputs the query
300 result on stdout. All other inspection features are disabled in this
301 mode.
302 For example:
304 $ virt-inspector -d Guest | virt-inspector --xpath '//filesystems'
306 <filesystems>
307 <filesystem dev="/dev/vg_f13x64/lv_root">
308 <type>ext4</type>
309 [...]
310 $ virt-inspector -d Guest | \
312 virt-inspector --xpath "string(//filesystem[@dev='/dev/sda1']/type)"
313 ext4
314 $ virt-inspector -d Guest | \
316 virt-inspector --xpath 'string(//icon)' | base64 -i -d | display -
317 [displays the guest icon, if there is one]
318
320 In early versions of libguestfs, virt-inspector was a large Perl script
321 that contained many heuristics for inspecting guests. This had several
322 problems: in order to do inspection from other tools (like guestfish)
323 we had to call out to this Perl script; and it privileged Perl over
324 other languages that libguestfs supports.
325 By libguestfs 1.8 we had rewritten the Perl code in C, and incorporated
327 it all into the core libguestfs API (guestfs(3)). Now virt-inspector
328 is simply a thin C program over the core C API. All of the inspection
329 information is available from all programming languages that libguestfs
330 supports, and from guestfish.
331 For a description of the C inspection API, read "INSPECTION" in
333 guestfs(3).
334 For example code using the C inspection API, look for inspect-vm.c
336 which ships with libguestfs.
337 inspect-vm.c has also been translated into other languages. For
339 example, inspect_vm.pl is the Perl translation, and there are other
340 translations for OCaml, Python, etc. See "USING LIBGUESTFS WITH OTHER
341 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES" in guestfs(3) for a list of man pages which
342 contain this example code.
343 GETTING INSPECTION DATA FROM GUESTFISH
345 If you use the guestfish -i option, then the main C inspection API
346 "guestfs_inspect_os" in guestfs(3) is called. This is equivalent to
347 the guestfish command "inspect-os". You can also call this guestfish
348 command by hand.
349 "inspect-os" performs inspection on the current disk image, returning
351 the list of operating systems found. Each OS is represented by its
352 root filesystem device. In the majority of cases, this command prints
353 nothing (no OSes found), or a single root device, but beware that it
354 can print multiple lines if there are multiple OSes or if there is an
355 install CD attached to the guest.
356 $ guestfish --ro -a F15x32.img
358 ><fs> run
359 ><fs> inspect-os
360 /dev/vg_f15x32/lv_root
361 Using the root device, you can fetch further information about the
363 guest:
364 ><fs> inspect-get-type /dev/vg_f15x32/lv_root
366 linux
367 ><fs> inspect-get-distro /dev/vg_f15x32/lv_root
368 fedora
369 ><fs> inspect-get-major-version /dev/vg_f15x32/lv_root
370 15
371 ><fs> inspect-get-product-name /dev/vg_f15x32/lv_root
372 Fedora release 15 (Lovelock)
373 Limitations of guestfish make it hard to assign the root device to a
375 variable (since guestfish doesn't have variables), so if you want to do
376 this reproducibly you are better off writing a script using one of the
377 other languages that the libguestfs API supports.
378 To list applications, you have to first mount up the disks:
380 ><fs> inspect-get-mountpoints /dev/vg_f15x32/lv_root
382 /: /dev/vg_f15x32/lv_root
383 /boot: /dev/vda1
384 ><fs> mount-ro /dev/vg_f15x32/lv_root /
385 ><fs> mount-ro /dev/vda1 /boot
386 and then call the inspect-list-applications API:
388 ><fs> inspect-list-applications /dev/vg_f15x32/lv_root | head -28
390 [0] = {
391 app_name: ConsoleKit
392 app_display_name:
393 app_epoch: 0
394 app_version: 0.4.5
395 app_release: 1.fc15
396 app_install_path:
397 app_trans_path:
398 app_publisher:
399 app_url:
400 app_source_package:
401 app_summary:
402 app_description:
403 }
404 [1] = {
405 app_name: ConsoleKit-libs
406 app_display_name:
407 app_epoch: 0
408 app_version: 0.4.5
409 app_release: 1.fc15
410 app_install_path:
411 app_trans_path:
412 app_publisher:
413 app_url:
414 app_source_package:
415 app_summary:
416 app_description:
417 }
418 To display an icon for the guest, note that filesystems must also be
420 mounted as above. You can then do:
421 ><fs> inspect-get-icon /dev/vg_f15x32/lv_root | display -
423
425 As described above, early versions of libguestfs shipped with a
426 different virt-inspector program written in Perl (the current version
427 is written in C). The XML output of the Perl virt-inspector was
428 different and it could also output in other formats like text.
429 The old virt-inspector is no longer supported or shipped with
431 libguestfs.
432 To confuse matters further, in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 we ship two
434 versions of virt-inspector with different names:
435 virt-inspector Old Perl version.
437 virt-inspector2 New C version.
438
440 This program returns 0 if successful, or non-zero if there was an
441 error.
442
444 guestfs(3), guestfish(1), http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath/, base64(1),
445 xmlstarlet(1), http://libguestfs.org/.
446
448 · Richard W.M. Jones http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/
449 · Matthew Booth mbooth@redhat.com
451
453 Copyright (C) 2010-2012 Red Hat Inc.
454
456 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
457 under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
458 Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your
459 option) any later version.
460 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
462 WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
463 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
464 General Public License for more details.
465 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
467 with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
468 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.
469
471 To get a list of bugs against libguestfs, use this link:
472 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/buglist.cgi?component=libguestfs&product=Virtualization+Tools
473 To report a new bug against libguestfs, use this link:
475 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/enter_bug.cgi?component=libguestfs&product=Virtualization+Tools
476 When reporting a bug, please supply:
478 · The version of libguestfs.
480 · Where you got libguestfs (eg. which Linux distro, compiled from
482 source, etc)
483 · Describe the bug accurately and give a way to reproduce it.
485 · Run libguestfs-test-tool(1) and paste the complete, unedited output
487 into the bug report.
488libguestfs-1.38.2 2018-05-15 virt-inspector(1)