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 Additional information about bootloader, kernel and drivers inside a
53 guest can be found using virt-drivers(1).
54
56 --help
57 Display brief help.
58 -a file
60 --add file
61 Add file which should be a disk image from a virtual machine. If
62 the virtual machine has multiple block devices, you must supply all
63 of them with separate -a options.
64 The format of the disk image is auto-detected. To override this
66 and force a particular format use the --format=.. option.
67 -a URI
69 --add URI
70 Add a remote disk. See "ADDING REMOTE STORAGE" in guestfish(1).
71 --blocksize=512
73 --blocksize=4096
74 --blocksize
75 This parameter sets the sector size of the disk image. It affects
76 all explicitly added subsequent disks after this parameter. Using
77 --blocksize with no argument switches the disk sector size to the
78 default value which is usually 512 bytes. See also
79 "guestfs_add_drive_opts" in guestfs(3).
80 -c URI
82 --connect URI
83 If using libvirt, connect to the given URI. If omitted, then we
84 connect to the default libvirt hypervisor.
85 Libvirt is only used if you specify a "domname" on the command
87 line. If you specify guest block devices directly (-a), then
88 libvirt is not used at all.
89 -d guest
91 --domain guest
92 Add all the disks from the named libvirt guest. Domain UUIDs can
93 be used instead of names.
94 --echo-keys
96 When prompting for keys and passphrases, virt-inspector normally
97 turns echoing off so you cannot see what you are typing. If you
98 are not worried about Tempest attacks and there is no one else in
99 the room you can specify this flag to see what you are typing.
100 --format=raw|qcow2|..
102 --format
103 Specify the format of disk images given on the command line. If
104 this is omitted then the format is autodetected from the content of
105 the disk image.
106 If disk images are requested from libvirt, then this program asks
108 libvirt for this information. In this case, the value of the
109 format parameter is ignored.
110 If working with untrusted raw-format guest disk images, you should
112 ensure the format is always specified.
113 --key SELECTOR
115 Specify a key for LUKS, to automatically open a LUKS device when
116 using the inspection. "ID" can be either the libguestfs device
117 name, or the UUID of the LUKS device.
118 --key "ID":key:KEY_STRING
120 Use the specified "KEY_STRING" as passphrase.
121 --key "ID":file:FILENAME
123 Read the passphrase from FILENAME.
124 --key "ID":clevis
126 Attempt passphrase-less unlocking for "ID" with Clevis, over
127 the network. Please refer to "ENCRYPTED DISKS" in guestfs(3)
128 for more information on network-bound disk encryption (NBDE).
129 Note that if any such option is present on the command line,
131 QEMU user networking will be automatically enabled for the
132 libguestfs appliance.
133 --keys-from-stdin
135 Read key or passphrase parameters from stdin. The default is to
136 try to read passphrases from the user by opening /dev/tty.
137 If there are multiple encrypted devices then you may need to supply
139 multiple keys on stdin, one per line.
140 --no-applications
142 By default the output of virt-inspector includes the list of all
143 the applications installed in the guest, if available.
144 Specify this option to disable this part of the resulting XML.
146 --no-icon
148 By default the output of virt-inspector includes the icon of the
149 guest, if available (see "icon").
150 Specify this option to disable this part of the resulting XML.
152 -v
154 --verbose
155 Enable verbose messages for debugging.
156 -V
158 --version
159 Display version number and exit.
160 -x Enable tracing of libguestfs API calls.
162 --xpath query
164 Perform an XPath query on the XML on stdin, and print the result on
165 stdout. In this mode virt-inspector simply runs an XPath query;
166 all other inspection functions are disabled. See "XPATH QUERIES"
167 below for some examples.
168
170 Previous versions of virt-inspector allowed you to write either:
171 virt-inspector disk.img [disk.img ...]
173 or
175 virt-inspector guestname
177 whereas in this version you should use -a or -d respectively to avoid
179 the confusing case where a disk image might have the same name as a
180 guest.
181 For compatibility the old style is still supported.
183
185 The virt-inspector XML is described precisely in a RELAX NG schema file
186 virt-inspector.rng which is supplied with libguestfs. This section is
187 just an overview.
188 The top-level element is <operatingsystems>, and it contains one or
190 more <operatingsystem> elements. You would only see more than one
191 <operatingsystem> element if the virtual machine is multi-boot, which
192 is vanishingly rare in real world VMs.
193 <operatingsystem>
195 In the <operatingsystem> tag are various optional fields that describe
196 the operating system, its architecture, the descriptive "product name"
197 string, the type of OS and so on, as in this example:
198 <operatingsystems>
200 <operatingsystem>
201 <root>/dev/sda2</root>
202 <name>windows</name>
203 <arch>i386</arch>
204 <distro>windows</distro>
205 <product_name>Windows 7 Enterprise</product_name>
206 <product_variant>Client</product_variant>
207 <major_version>6</major_version>
208 <minor_version>1</minor_version>
209 <windows_systemroot>/Windows</windows_systemroot>
210 In brief, <name> is the class of operating system (something like
212 "linux" or "windows"), <distro> is the distribution (eg. "fedora" but
213 many other distros are recognized) and <arch> is the guest
214 architecture. The other fields are fairly self-explanatory, but
215 because these fields are taken directly from the libguestfs inspection
216 API you can find precise information from "INSPECTION" in guestfs(3).
217 The <root> element is the root filesystem device, but from the point of
219 view of libguestfs (block devices may have completely different names
220 inside the VM itself).
221 <mountpoints>
223 Un*x-like guests typically have multiple filesystems which are mounted
224 at various mountpoints, and these are described in the <mountpoints>
225 element which looks like this:
226 <operatingsystems>
228 <operatingsystem>
229 ...
230 <mountpoints>
231 <mountpoint dev="/dev/vg_f13x64/lv_root">/</mountpoint>
232 <mountpoint dev="/dev/sda1">/boot</mountpoint>
233 </mountpoints>
234 As with <root>, devices are from the point of view of libguestfs, and
236 may have completely different names inside the guest. Only mountable
237 filesystems appear in this list, not things like swap devices.
238 <filesystems>
240 <filesystems> is like <mountpoints> but covers all filesystems
241 belonging to the guest, including swap and empty partitions. (In the
242 rare case of a multi-boot guest, it covers filesystems belonging to
243 this OS or shared with this OS and other OSes).
244 You might see something like this:
246 <operatingsystems>
248 <operatingsystem>
249 ...
250 <filesystems>
251 <filesystem dev="/dev/vg_f13x64/lv_root">
252 <type>ext4</type>
253 <label>Fedora-13-x86_64</label>
254 <uuid>e6a4db1e-15c2-477b-ac2a-699181c396aa</uuid>
255 </filesystem>
256 The optional elements within <filesystem> are the filesystem type, the
258 label, and the UUID.
259 <applications>
261 The related elements <package_format>, <package_management> and
262 <applications> describe applications installed in the virtual machine.
263 <package_format>, if present, describes the packaging system used.
265 Typical values would be "rpm" and "deb".
266 <package_management>, if present, describes the package manager.
268 Typical values include "yum", "up2date" and "apt"
269 <applications> lists the packages or applications installed.
271 <operatingsystems>
273 <operatingsystem>
274 ...
275 <applications>
276 <application>
277 <name>coreutils</name>
278 <version>8.5</version>
279 <release>1</release>
280 </application>
281 The version and release fields may not be available for some types
283 guests. Other fields are possible, see
284 "guestfs_inspect_list_applications" in guestfs(3).
285 <drive_mappings>
287 For operating systems like Windows which use drive letters, virt-
288 inspector is able to find out how drive letters map to filesystems.
289 <operatingsystems>
291 <operatingsystem>
292 ...
293 <drive_mappings>
294 <drive_mapping name="C">/dev/sda2</drive_mapping>
295 <drive_mapping name="E">/dev/sdb1</drive_mapping>
296 </drive_mappings>
297 In the example above, drive C maps to the filesystem on the second
299 partition on the first disk, and drive E maps to the filesystem on the
300 first partition on the second disk.
301 Note that this only covers permanent local filesystem mappings, not
303 things like network shares. Furthermore NTFS volume mount points may
304 not be listed here.
305 <icon>
307 Virt-inspector is sometimes able to extract an icon or logo for the
308 guest. The icon is returned as base64-encoded PNG data. Note that the
309 icon can be very large and high quality.
310 <operatingsystems>
312 <operatingsystem>
313 ...
314 <icon>
315 iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAGAAAABg[.......]
316 [... many lines of base64 data ...]
317 </icon>
318 To display the icon, you have to extract it and convert the base64 data
320 back to a binary file. Use an XPath query or simply an editor to
321 extract the data, then use the coreutils base64(1) program to do the
322 conversion back to a PNG file:
323 base64 -i -d < icon.data > icon.png
325
327 Virt-inspector includes built in support for running XPath queries.
328 The reason for including XPath support directly in virt-inspector is
329 simply that there are no good and widely available command line
330 programs that can do XPath queries. The only good one is xmlstarlet(1)
331 and that is not available on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
332 To perform an XPath query, use the --xpath option. Note that in this
334 mode, virt-inspector simply reads XML from stdin and outputs the query
335 result on stdout. All other inspection features are disabled in this
336 mode.
337 For example:
339 $ virt-inspector -d Guest | virt-inspector --xpath '//filesystems'
341 <filesystems>
342 <filesystem dev="/dev/vg_f13x64/lv_root">
343 <type>ext4</type>
344 [...]
345 $ virt-inspector -d Guest | \
347 virt-inspector --xpath "string(//filesystem[@dev='/dev/sda1']/type)"
348 ext4
349 $ virt-inspector -d Guest | \
351 virt-inspector --xpath 'string(//icon)' | base64 -i -d | display -
352 [displays the guest icon, if there is one]
353
355 In early versions of libguestfs, virt-inspector was a large Perl script
356 that contained many heuristics for inspecting guests. This had several
357 problems: in order to do inspection from other tools (like guestfish)
358 we had to call out to this Perl script; and it privileged Perl over
359 other languages that libguestfs supports.
360 By libguestfs 1.8 we had rewritten the Perl code in C, and incorporated
362 it all into the core libguestfs API (guestfs(3)). Now virt-inspector
363 is simply a thin C program over the core C API. All of the inspection
364 information is available from all programming languages that libguestfs
365 supports, and from guestfish.
366 For a description of the C inspection API, read "INSPECTION" in
368 guestfs(3).
369 For example code using the C inspection API, look for inspect-vm.c
371 which ships with libguestfs.
372 inspect-vm.c has also been translated into other languages. For
374 example, inspect_vm.pl is the Perl translation, and there are other
375 translations for OCaml, Python, etc. See "USING LIBGUESTFS WITH OTHER
376 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES" in guestfs(3) for a list of man pages which
377 contain this example code.
378 GETTING INSPECTION DATA FROM GUESTFISH
380 If you use the guestfish -i option, then the main C inspection API
381 "guestfs_inspect_os" in guestfs(3) is called. This is equivalent to
382 the guestfish command "inspect-os". You can also call this guestfish
383 command by hand.
384 "inspect-os" performs inspection on the current disk image, returning
386 the list of operating systems found. Each OS is represented by its
387 root filesystem device. In the majority of cases, this command prints
388 nothing (no OSes found), or a single root device, but beware that it
389 can print multiple lines if there are multiple OSes or if there is an
390 install CD attached to the guest.
391 $ guestfish --ro -a F15x32.img
393 ><fs> run
394 ><fs> inspect-os
395 /dev/vg_f15x32/lv_root
396 Using the root device, you can fetch further information about the
398 guest:
399 ><fs> inspect-get-type /dev/vg_f15x32/lv_root
401 linux
402 ><fs> inspect-get-distro /dev/vg_f15x32/lv_root
403 fedora
404 ><fs> inspect-get-major-version /dev/vg_f15x32/lv_root
405 15
406 ><fs> inspect-get-product-name /dev/vg_f15x32/lv_root
407 Fedora release 15 (Lovelock)
408 Limitations of guestfish make it hard to assign the root device to a
410 variable (since guestfish doesn't have variables), so if you want to do
411 this reproducibly you are better off writing a script using one of the
412 other languages that the libguestfs API supports.
413 To list applications, you have to first mount up the disks:
415 ><fs> inspect-get-mountpoints /dev/vg_f15x32/lv_root
417 /: /dev/vg_f15x32/lv_root
418 /boot: /dev/vda1
419 ><fs> mount-ro /dev/vg_f15x32/lv_root /
420 ><fs> mount-ro /dev/vda1 /boot
421 and then call the inspect-list-applications API:
423 ><fs> inspect-list-applications /dev/vg_f15x32/lv_root | head -28
425 [0] = {
426 app_name: ConsoleKit
427 app_display_name:
428 app_epoch: 0
429 app_version: 0.4.5
430 app_release: 1.fc15
431 app_install_path:
432 app_trans_path:
433 app_publisher:
434 app_url:
435 app_source_package:
436 app_summary:
437 app_description:
438 }
439 [1] = {
440 app_name: ConsoleKit-libs
441 app_display_name:
442 app_epoch: 0
443 app_version: 0.4.5
444 app_release: 1.fc15
445 app_install_path:
446 app_trans_path:
447 app_publisher:
448 app_url:
449 app_source_package:
450 app_summary:
451 app_description:
452 }
453 To display an icon for the guest, note that filesystems must also be
455 mounted as above. You can then do:
456 ><fs> inspect-get-icon /dev/vg_f15x32/lv_root | display -
458
460 As described above, early versions of libguestfs shipped with a
461 different virt-inspector program written in Perl (the current version
462 is written in C). The XML output of the Perl virt-inspector was
463 different and it could also output in other formats like text.
464 The old virt-inspector is no longer supported or shipped with
466 libguestfs.
467 To confuse matters further, in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 we ship two
469 versions of virt-inspector with different names:
470 virt-inspector Old Perl version.
472 virt-inspector2 New C version.
473
475 This program returns 0 if successful, or non-zero if there was an
476 error.
477
479 guestfs(3), guestfish(1), http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath/, base64(1),
480 xmlstarlet(1), virt-drivers(1), http://libguestfs.org/.
481
483 • Richard W.M. Jones http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/
484 • Matthew Booth mbooth@redhat.com
486
488 Copyright (C) 2010-2023 Red Hat Inc.
489
491 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
492 under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
493 Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your
494 option) any later version.
495 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
497 WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
498 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
499 General Public License for more details.
500 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
502 with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
503 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.
504
506 To get a list of bugs against libguestfs, use this link:
507 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/buglist.cgi?component=libguestfs&product=Virtualization+Tools
508 To report a new bug against libguestfs, use this link:
510 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/enter_bug.cgi?component=libguestfs&product=Virtualization+Tools
511 When reporting a bug, please supply:
513 • The version of libguestfs.
515 • Where you got libguestfs (eg. which Linux distro, compiled from
517 source, etc)
518 • Describe the bug accurately and give a way to reproduce it.
520 • Run libguestfs-test-tool(1) and paste the complete, unedited output
522 into the bug report.
523guestfs-tools-1.50.1 2023-04-06 virt-inspector(1)