1virt-inspector(1)           Virtualization Support           virt-inspector(1)
2
3
4

NAME

6       virt-inspector - Display operating system version and other information
7       about a virtual machine
8

SYNOPSIS

10        virt-inspector [--options] -d domname
11
12        virt-inspector [--options] -a disk.img [-a disk.img ...]
13
14       Old-style:
15
16        virt-inspector domname
17
18        virt-inspector disk.img [disk.img ...]
19

DESCRIPTION

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
25       Virt-inspector produces XML output for feeding into other programs.
26
27       In the normal usage, use "virt-inspector -d domname" where "domname" is
28       the libvirt domain (see: "virsh list --all").
29
30       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
36       You can also run virt-inspector on install disks, live CDs, bootable
37       USB keys and similar.
38
39       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
43       Because virt-inspector needs direct access to guest images, it won’t
44       normally work over remote libvirt connections.
45
46       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
52       Additional information about bootloader, kernel and drivers inside a
53       guest can be found using virt-drivers(1).
54

OPTIONS

56       --help
57           Display brief help.
58
59       -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
65           The format of the disk image is auto-detected.  To override this
66           and force a particular format use the --format=.. option.
67
68       -a URI
69       --add URI
70           Add a remote disk.  See "ADDING REMOTE STORAGE" in guestfish(1).
71
72       --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
81       -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
86           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
90       -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
95       --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
101       --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
107           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
111           If working with untrusted raw-format guest disk images, you should
112           ensure the format is always specified.
113
114       --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
119           --key "ID":key:KEY_STRING
120               Use the specified "KEY_STRING" as passphrase.
121
122           --key "ID":file:FILENAME
123               Read the passphrase from FILENAME.
124
125           --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
130               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
134       --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
138           If there are multiple encrypted devices then you may need to supply
139           multiple keys on stdin, one per line.
140
141       --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
145           Specify this option to disable this part of the resulting XML.
146
147       --no-icon
148           By default the output of virt-inspector includes the icon of the
149           guest, if available (see "icon").
150
151           Specify this option to disable this part of the resulting XML.
152
153       -v
154       --verbose
155           Enable verbose messages for debugging.
156
157       -V
158       --version
159           Display version number and exit.
160
161       -x  Enable tracing of libguestfs API calls.
162
163       --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

OLD-STYLE COMMAND LINE ARGUMENTS

170       Previous versions of virt-inspector allowed you to write either:
171
172        virt-inspector disk.img [disk.img ...]
173
174       or
175
176        virt-inspector guestname
177
178       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
182       For compatibility the old style is still supported.
183

XML FORMAT

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
189       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
194   <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
199        <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
211       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
218       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
222   <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
227        <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
235       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
239   <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
245       You might see something like this:
246
247        <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
257       The optional elements within <filesystem> are the filesystem type, the
258       label, and the UUID.
259
260   <applications>
261       The related elements <package_format>, <package_management> and
262       <applications> describe applications installed in the virtual machine.
263
264       <package_format>, if present, describes the packaging system used.
265       Typical values would be "rpm" and "deb".
266
267       <package_management>, if present, describes the package manager.
268       Typical values include "yum", "up2date" and "apt"
269
270       <applications> lists the packages or applications installed.
271
272        <operatingsystems>
273          <operatingsystem>
274            ...
275            <applications>
276              <application>
277                <name>coreutils</name>
278                <version>8.5</version>
279                <release>1</release>
280              </application>
281
282       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
286   <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
290        <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
298       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
302       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
306   <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
311        <operatingsystems>
312          <operatingsystem>
313            ...
314            <icon>
315              iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAGAAAABg[.......]
316              [... many lines of base64 data ...]
317            </icon>
318
319       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
324        base64 -i -d < icon.data > icon.png
325

XPATH QUERIES

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
333       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
338       For example:
339
340        $ virt-inspector -d Guest | virt-inspector --xpath '//filesystems'
341        <filesystems>
342             <filesystem dev="/dev/vg_f13x64/lv_root">
343               <type>ext4</type>
344        [...]
345
346        $ virt-inspector -d Guest | \
347            virt-inspector --xpath "string(//filesystem[@dev='/dev/sda1']/type)"
348        ext4
349
350        $ virt-inspector -d Guest | \
351            virt-inspector --xpath 'string(//icon)' | base64 -i -d | display -
352        [displays the guest icon, if there is one]
353

GETTING INSPECTION DATA FROM THE LIBGUESTFS API

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
361       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
367       For a description of the C inspection API, read "INSPECTION" in
368       guestfs(3).
369
370       For example code using the C inspection API, look for inspect-vm.c
371       which ships with libguestfs.
372
373       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
379   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
385       "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
392        $ guestfish --ro -a F15x32.img
393        ><fs> run
394        ><fs> inspect-os
395        /dev/vg_f15x32/lv_root
396
397       Using the root device, you can fetch further information about the
398       guest:
399
400        ><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
409       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
414       To list applications, you have to first mount up the disks:
415
416        ><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
422       and then call the inspect-list-applications API:
423
424        ><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
454       To display an icon for the guest, note that filesystems must also be
455       mounted as above.  You can then do:
456
457        ><fs> inspect-get-icon /dev/vg_f15x32/lv_root | display -
458

OLD VERSIONS OF VIRT-INSPECTOR

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
465       The old virt-inspector is no longer supported or shipped with
466       libguestfs.
467
468       To confuse matters further, in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 we ship two
469       versions of virt-inspector with different names:
470
471        virt-inspector     Old Perl version.
472        virt-inspector2    New C version.
473

EXIT STATUS

475       This program returns 0 if successful, or non-zero if there was an
476       error.
477

SEE ALSO

479       guestfs(3), guestfish(1), http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath/, base64(1),
480       xmlstarlet(1), virt-drivers(1), http://libguestfs.org/.
481

AUTHORS

483       •   Richard W.M. Jones http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/
484
485       •   Matthew Booth mbooth@redhat.com
486
488       Copyright (C) 2010-2023 Red Hat Inc.
489

LICENSE

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
496       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
501       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

BUGS

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
509       To report a new bug against libguestfs, use this link:
510       https://bugzilla.redhat.com/enter_bug.cgi?component=libguestfs&product=Virtualization+Tools
511
512       When reporting a bug, please supply:
513
514       •   The version of libguestfs.
515
516       •   Where you got libguestfs (eg. which Linux distro, compiled from
517           source, etc)
518
519       •   Describe the bug accurately and give a way to reproduce it.
520
521       •   Run libguestfs-test-tool(1) and paste the complete, unedited output
522           into the bug report.
523
524
525
526guestfs-tools-1.50.1              2023-04-06                 virt-inspector(1)
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