NAME

virt-cat - Display a file in a virtual machine


SYNOPSIS

 virt-cat [--options] domname file
 virt-cat [--options] disk.img [disk.img ...] file


DESCRIPTION

virt-cat is a command line tool to display the contents of file where file exists in the named virtual machine (or disk image).

virt-cat can be used to quickly view a single file. To edit a file, use virt-edit. For more complex cases you should look at the guestfish(1) tool.


EXAMPLES

Display /etc/fstab file from inside the libvirt VM called mydomain:

 virt-cat mydomain /etc/fstab

List syslog messages from a VM:

 virt-cat mydomain /var/log/messages | tail

Find out what DHCP IP address a VM acquired:

 virt-cat mydomain /var/log/messages | grep 'dhclient: bound to' | tail

Find out what packages were recently installed:

 virt-cat mydomain /var/log/yum.log | tail

Find out who is logged on inside a virtual machine:

 virt-cat mydomain /var/run/utmp > /tmp/utmp
 who /tmp/utmp

or who was logged on:

 virt-cat mydomain /var/log/wtmp > /tmp/wtmp
 last -f /tmp/wtmp


OPTIONS

--help

Display brief help.

--version

Display version number and exit.

--connect URI | -c URI

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

If you specify guest block devices directly, then libvirt is not used at all.


SEE ALSO

guestfs(3), guestfish(1), virt-edit(1), the Sys::Guestfs(3) manpage, the Sys::Guestfs::Lib(3) manpage, the Sys::Virt(3) manpage, http://libguestfs.org/.


AUTHOR

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


COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) 2009 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., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.