NAME

guestfsd - guestfs daemon

SYNOPSIS

 guestfsd [-r] [-v|--verbose]

DESCRIPTION

guestfsd is the libguestfs daemon. Normal users never need to run this program explicitly. This man page discusses what guestfsd does in both the libguestfs appliance and when using libguestfs live.

LIBGUESTFS APPLIANCE

For the architecture of the libguestfs appliance, see "ARCHITECTURE" in guestfs(3).

After the appliance boots, the /init script in the appliance starts guestfsd with no arguments. guestfsd opens the virtio-serial port on a known path (see "FILES"). It initiates the protocol (see "COMMUNICATION PROTOCOL" in guestfs(3)) and processes requests one at a time from the library until the appliance is destroyed.

Filesystems are mounted under /sysroot and all filesystem operations happen relative to this directory.

LIBGUESTFS LIVE

In the libguestfs live case, guestfsd -r is started from the rc-scripts, systemd, etc.

The -r option causes the daemon to operate on the root filesystem instead of /sysroot.

Currently (because of limitations in virtio-serial) only one client can connect at a time, and guestfsd must be restarted after each client disconnects. If libguestfs live were changed to use a different transport such as TCP/IP then this limitation could be removed.

OPTIONS

-?
--help

Display brief help.

-r

Set the root filesystem to be / (instead of the default which is /sysroot). Also do not unmount filesystems when the daemon exits.

This option is used to enable libguestfs live.

-v
--verbose

Enable verbose messages for debugging.

The verbose flag is also set if the Linux command line contains the substring guestfs_verbose=1.

EXIT STATUS

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

FILES

/dev/virtio-ports/org.libguestfs.channel.0

The virtio serial port which guestfsd connects to.

/proc/cmdline

The Linux command line is parsed to discover guestfs_* flags.

SEE ALSO

guestfs(3), http://libguestfs.org/.

AUTHOR

Richard W.M. Jones http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) 2009-2013 Red Hat Inc.

LICENSE

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.

BUGS

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: