virt-inspector - Man Page

 virt-inspector [--options] -d domname

 virt-inspector [--options] -a disk.img [-a disk.img ...]

Old-style:

 virt-inspector domname

 virt-inspector disk.img [disk.img ...]

virt-inspector examines a virtual machine or disk image and tries to determine the version of the operating system and other information about the virtual machine.

Virt-inspector produces XML output for feeding into other programs.

In the normal usage, use virt-inspector -d domname where domname is the libvirt domain (see: virsh list --all).

You can also run virt-inspector directly on disk images from a single virtual machine.  Use virt-inspector -a disk.img.  In rare cases a domain has several block devices, in which case you should list several -a options one after another, with the first corresponding to the guest’s /dev/sda, the second to the guest’s /dev/sdb and so on.

You can also run virt-inspector on install disks, live CDs, bootable USB keys and similar.

Virt-inspector can only inspect and report upon one domain at a time.  To inspect several virtual machines, you have to run virt-inspector several times (for example, from a shell script for-loop).

Because virt-inspector needs direct access to guest images, it won’t normally work over remote libvirt connections.

All of the information available from virt-inspector is also available through the core libguestfs inspection API (see "INSPECTION" in guestfs(3)).  The same information can also be fetched using guestfish or via libguestfs bindings in many programming languages (see "Getting Inspection Data from the Libguestfs API").

Additional information about bootloader, kernel and drivers inside a guest can be found using virt-drivers(1).

--help

Display brief help.

-a file

--add file

Add file which should be a disk image from a virtual machine.  If the virtual machine has multiple block devices, you must supply all of them with separate -a options.

The format of the disk image is auto-detected.  To override this and force a particular format use the --format=.. option.

-a URI

--add URI

Add a remote disk.  See "ADDING REMOTE STORAGE" in guestfish(1).

--blocksize=512

--blocksize=4096

--blocksize

This parameter sets the sector size of the disk image.  It affects all explicitly added subsequent disks after this parameter.  Using --blocksize with no argument switches the disk sector size to the default value which is usually 512 bytes.  See also "guestfs_add_drive_opts" in guestfs(3).

-c URI

--connect URI

If using libvirt, connect to the given URI.  If omitted, then we connect to the default libvirt hypervisor.

Libvirt is only used if you specify a domname on the command line.  If you specify guest block devices directly (-a), then libvirt is not used at all.

-d guest

--domain guest

Add all the disks from the named libvirt guest.  Domain UUIDs can be used instead of names.

--echo-keys

When prompting for keys and passphrases, virt-inspector normally turns echoing off so you cannot see what you are typing.  If you are not worried about Tempest attacks and there is no one else in the room you can specify this flag to see what you are typing.

--format=raw|qcow2|..

--format

Specify the format of disk images given on the command line.  If this is omitted then the format is autodetected from the content of the disk image.

If disk images are requested from libvirt, then this program asks libvirt for this information.  In this case, the value of the format parameter is ignored.

If working with untrusted raw-format guest disk images, you should ensure the format is always specified.

--key SELECTOR

Specify a key for LUKS, to automatically open a LUKS device when using the inspection.

--key NAME:key:KEY_STRING

--key UUID:key:KEY_STRING

--key all:key:KEY_STRING

NAME is the libguestfs device name (eg. /dev/sda1).  UUID is the device UUID.  all means try the key against any encrypted device.

Use the specified KEY_STRING as passphrase.

--key NAME:file:FILENAME

--key UUID:file:FILENAME

--key all:file:FILENAME

Read the passphrase from FILENAME.

--key NAME:clevis

--key UUID:clevis

--key all:clevis

Attempt passphrase-less unlocking for the device with Clevis, over the network.  Please refer to "ENCRYPTED DISKS" in guestfs(3) for more information on network-bound disk encryption (NBDE).

Note that if any such option is present on the command line, QEMU user networking will be automatically enabled for the libguestfs appliance.

--keys-from-stdin

Read key or passphrase parameters from stdin.  The default is to try to read passphrases from the user by opening /dev/tty.

If there are multiple encrypted devices then you may need to supply multiple keys on stdin, one per line.

--no-applications

By default the output of virt-inspector includes the list of all the applications installed in the guest, if available.

Specify this option to disable this part of the resulting XML.

--no-icon

By default the output of virt-inspector includes the icon of the guest, if available (see "icon").

Specify this option to disable this part of the resulting XML.

-v

--verbose

Enable verbose messages for debugging.

-V

--version

Display version number and exit.

-x

Enable tracing of libguestfs API calls.

--xpath query

Perform an XPath query on the XML on stdin, and print the result on stdout.  In this mode virt-inspector simply runs an XPath query; all other inspection functions are disabled.  See "Xpath Queries" below for some examples.

Previous versions of virt-inspector allowed you to write either:

 virt-inspector disk.img [disk.img ...]

or

 virt-inspector guestname

whereas in this version you should use -a or -d respectively to avoid the confusing case where a disk image might have the same name as a guest.

For compatibility the old style is still supported.

The virt-inspector XML is described precisely in a RELAX NG schema file virt-inspector.rng which is supplied with libguestfs.  This section is just an overview.

The top-level element is <operatingsystems>, and it contains one or more <operatingsystem> elements.  You would only see more than one <operatingsystem> element if the virtual machine is multi-boot, which is vanishingly rare in real world VMs.

 <operatingsystems>
   <operatingsystem>
     <root>/dev/sda2</root>
     <name>windows</name>
     <arch>i386</arch>
     <distro>windows</distro>
     <product_name>Windows 7 Enterprise</product_name>
     <product_variant>Client</product_variant>
     <major_version>6</major_version>
     <minor_version>1</minor_version>
     <windows_systemroot>/Windows</windows_systemroot>

 <operatingsystems>
   <operatingsystem>
     ...
     <mountpoints>
       <mountpoint dev="/dev/vg_f13x64/lv_root">/</mountpoint>
       <mountpoint dev="/dev/sda1">/boot</mountpoint>
     </mountpoints>

 <operatingsystems>
   <operatingsystem>
     ...
     <filesystems>
       <filesystem dev="/dev/vg_f13x64/lv_root">
         <type>ext4</type>
         <label>Fedora-13-x86_64</label>
         <uuid>e6a4db1e-15c2-477b-ac2a-699181c396aa</uuid>
       </filesystem>

 <operatingsystems>
   <operatingsystem>
     ...
     <applications>
       <application>
         <name>coreutils</name>
         <version>8.5</version>
         <release>1</release>
       </application>

 <operatingsystems>
   <operatingsystem>
     ...
     <drive_mappings>
       <drive_mapping name="C">/dev/sda2</drive_mapping>
       <drive_mapping name="E">/dev/sdb1</drive_mapping>
     </drive_mappings>

 <operatingsystems>
   <operatingsystem>
     ...
     <icon>
       iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAGAAAABg[.......]
       [... many lines of base64 data ...]
     </icon>

 base64 -i -d < icon.data > icon.png

Virt-inspector includes built in support for running XPath queries. The reason for including XPath support directly in virt-inspector is simply that there are no good and widely available command line programs that can do XPath queries.  The only good one is xmlstarlet(1) and that is not available on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

To perform an XPath query, use the --xpath option.  Note that in this mode, virt-inspector simply reads XML from stdin and outputs the query result on stdout.  All other inspection features are disabled in this mode.

For example:

 $ virt-inspector -d Guest | virt-inspector --xpath '//filesystems'
 <filesystems>
      <filesystem dev="/dev/vg_f13x64/lv_root">
        <type>ext4</type>
 [...]

 $ virt-inspector -d Guest | \
     virt-inspector --xpath "string(//filesystem[@dev='/dev/sda1']/type)"
 ext4

 $ virt-inspector -d Guest | \
     virt-inspector --xpath 'string(//icon)' | base64 -i -d | display -
 [displays the guest icon, if there is one]

In early versions of libguestfs, virt-inspector was a large Perl script that contained many heuristics for inspecting guests.  This had several problems: in order to do inspection from other tools (like guestfish) we had to call out to this Perl script; and it privileged Perl over other languages that libguestfs supports.

By libguestfs 1.8 we had rewritten the Perl code in C, and incorporated it all into the core libguestfs API (guestfs(3)).  Now virt-inspector is simply a thin C program over the core C API.  All of the inspection information is available from all programming languages that libguestfs supports, and from guestfish.

For a description of the C inspection API, read "INSPECTION" in guestfs(3).

For example code using the C inspection API, look for inspect-vm.c which ships with libguestfs.

inspect-vm.c has also been translated into other languages.  For example, inspect_vm.pl is the Perl translation, and there are other translations for OCaml, Python, etc.  See "USING LIBGUESTFS WITH OTHER PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES" in guestfs(3) for a list of man pages which contain this example code.

 $ guestfish --ro -a F15x32.img
 ><fs> run
 ><fs> inspect-os
 /dev/vg_f15x32/lv_root

 ><fs> inspect-get-type /dev/vg_f15x32/lv_root
 linux
 ><fs> inspect-get-distro /dev/vg_f15x32/lv_root
 fedora
 ><fs> inspect-get-major-version /dev/vg_f15x32/lv_root
 15
 ><fs> inspect-get-product-name /dev/vg_f15x32/lv_root
 Fedora release 15 (Lovelock)

 ><fs> inspect-get-mountpoints /dev/vg_f15x32/lv_root
 /: /dev/vg_f15x32/lv_root
 /boot: /dev/vda1
 ><fs> mount-ro /dev/vg_f15x32/lv_root /
 ><fs> mount-ro /dev/vda1 /boot

 ><fs> inspect-list-applications /dev/vg_f15x32/lv_root | head -28
 [0] = {
   app_name: ConsoleKit
   app_display_name:
   app_epoch: 0
   app_version: 0.4.5
   app_release: 1.fc15
   app_install_path:
   app_trans_path:
   app_publisher:
   app_url:
   app_source_package:
   app_summary:
   app_description:
 }
 [1] = {
   app_name: ConsoleKit-libs
   app_display_name:
   app_epoch: 0
   app_version: 0.4.5
   app_release: 1.fc15
   app_install_path:
   app_trans_path:
   app_publisher:
   app_url:
   app_source_package:
   app_summary:
   app_description:
 }

 ><fs> inspect-get-icon /dev/vg_f15x32/lv_root | display -

As described above, early versions of libguestfs shipped with a different virt-inspector program written in Perl (the current version is written in C).  The XML output of the Perl virt-inspector was different and it could also output in other formats like text.

The old virt-inspector is no longer supported or shipped with libguestfs.

To confuse matters further, in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 we ship two versions of virt-inspector with different names:

 virt-inspector     Old Perl version.
 virt-inspector2    New C version.

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

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

• Richard W.M. Jones http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/
• Matthew Booth mbooth@redhat.com

Copyright (C) 2010-2023 Red Hat Inc.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.

To get a list of bugs against libguestfs, use this link: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/buglist.cgi?component=libguestfs&product=Virtualization+Tools

To report a new bug against libguestfs, use this link: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/enter_bug.cgi?component=libguestfs&product=Virtualization+Tools

When reporting a bug, please supply:

• The version of libguestfs.
• Where you got libguestfs (eg. which Linux distro, compiled from source, etc)
• Describe the bug accurately and give a way to reproduce it.
• Run libguestfs-test-tool(1) and paste the complete, unedited output into the bug report.

guestfish(1), guestfs(3), guestfs-hacking(1), guestfs-recipes(1), guestfs-security(1), guestfs-testing(1), guestmount(1), virt-drivers(1), virt-filesystems(1), virt-rescue(1), virt-v2v-inspector(1).