virt-clone(1)

1VIRT-CLONE(1)            Virtual Machine Install Tools           VIRT-CLONE(1)
2
3
4

NAME

6       virt-clone - clone existing virtual machine images
7

SYNOPSIS

9       virt-clone [OPTION]...
10

DESCRIPTION

12       virt-clone is a command line tool for cloning existing virtual machine
13       images using the "libvirt" hypervisor management library. It will copy
14       the disk images of any existing virtual machine, and define a new guest
15       with an identical virtual hardware configuration. Elements which
16       require uniqueness will be updated to avoid a clash between old and new
17       guests.
18
19       Given suitable command line arguments, "virt-clone" is capable of run‐
20       ning completely unattended, with the guest 'kickstarting' itself too.
21       This allows for easy automation of guest installs. A companion tool
22       "virt-clone(1)" is provided for cloning pre-existing guests if their
23       installation cannot be easily automated from pristine media.
24

OPTIONS

26       Any of the options can be omitted, in which case "virt-clone" will run
27       interactively prompting for input as required.
28
29       -h, --help
30           Show the help message and exit
31
32       -o ORIGINAL_GUEST, --original=ORIGINAL_GUEST
33           Name or uuid for the original guest to be cloned. This guest must
34           be shut off since it is not possible to safely clone active guests
35           at this time.
36
37       -n NAME, --name=NAME
38           Name of the new guest virtual machine instance. This must be unique
39           amongst all guests known to the hypervisor on this machine, includ‐
40           ing those not currently active. To re-define an existing guest, use
41           the virsh(1) tool to shut it down & delete it prior to running
42           "virt-clone". This parameter will be prompted for if omitted on the
43           command line.
44
45       -u UUID, --uuid=UUID
46           UUID for the guest; if none is given a random UUID will be gener‐
47           ated. If you specify UUID, you should use a 32-digit hexadecimal
48           number. UUID are intended to be unique across the entire data cen‐
49           ter, and indeed world. Bear this in mind if manually specifying a
50           UUID
51
52       -f DISKFILE, --file=DISKFILE
53           Path to the file, disk partition, or logical volume to use as the
54           backing store for the guest's virtual disk. If the original guest
55           has multiple disks, this parameter must be repeated multiple times,
56           once per disk in the original virtual machine.
57
58       -m MAC, --mac=MAC
59           Fixed MAC address for the guest; If this parameter is omitted, or
60           the value "RANDOM" is specified a suitable address will be randomly
61           generated. For Xen virtual machines it is required that the first 3
62           pairs in the MAC address be the sequence '00:16:3e', while for QEMU
63           or KVM virtual machines it must be '54:52:00'.
64
65       --connect=CONNECT     Connect to hypervisor with URI
66           Connect to a non-default hypervisor. The default connection is cho‐
67           sen based on the following rules:
68
69           xen If running on a host with the Xen kernel (checks against
70               /proc/xen)
71
72           qemu:///system
73               If running on a bare metal kernel as root
74
75           qemu:///session
76               If running on a bare metal kernel as non-root
77
78           It is only necessary to provide the "--connect" argument if this
79           default prioritization is incorrect, eg if wanting to use QEMU
80           while on a Xen kernel.
81
82       -d, --debug
83           Print debugging information to the terminal when running the
84           install process.  The debugging information is also stored in
85           "$HOME/.virtinst/virt-clone.log" even if this parameter is omitted.
86

EXAMPLES

88       Clone the guest called "demo" which has a single disk to copy
89
90         # virt-clone \
91              --original demo \
92              --name newdemo \
93              --file /var/lib/xen/images/newdemo.img
94
95       Clone a QEMU guest with multiple disks
96
97         # virt-clone \
98              --connect qemu:///system \
99              --original demo \
100              --name newdemo \
101              --file /var/lib/xen/images/newdemo.img \
102              --file /var/lib/xen/images/newdata.img
103
104       Clone a guest to a physical device which is at least as big as the
105       original guests disks. If the destination device is bigger, the new
106       guest can do a filesystem resize when it boots.
107
108         # virt-clone \
109              --connect qemu:///system \
110              --name demo \
111              --file /dev/HostVG/DemoVM \
112              --mac 54:52:00:34:11:54
113

AUTHOR

115       Written by Kazuki Mizushima, and a team of many other contributors. See
116       the AUTHORS file in the source distribution for the complete list of
117       credits.
118

BUGS

120       Report bugs to the mailing list "http://www.redhat.com/mail‐
121       man/listinfo/et-mgmt-tools" or directly to BugZilla
122       "http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/" against the "Fedora" product,
123       and the "python-virtinst" component.
124

COPYRIGHT

126       Copyright (C) Fujitsu Limited 2007, and various contributors.  This is
127       free software. You may redistribute copies of it under the terms of the
128       GNU General Public License "http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html".
129       There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
130