NAME

virt-rescue - Run a rescue shell on a virtual machine

SYNOPSIS

 virt-rescue [--options] domname

 virt-rescue [--options] disk.img [disk.img ...]

WARNING

You must not use virt-rescue on live virtual machines. Doing so will probably result in disk corruption in the VM. virt-rescue tries to stop you from doing this, but doesn't catch all cases.

However if you use the --ro (read only) option, then you can attach a shell to a live virtual machine, but the results might be strange or inconsistent at times (but you won't get disk corruption).

DESCRIPTION

virt-rescue gives you a rescue shell and some simple recovery tools which you can use on a virtual machine disk image.

After running virt-rescue, what you see under / is the recovery appliance.

You must mount the virtual machine's filesystems by hand. There is a directory /sysroot where you can mount filesystems. For example:

 ><rescue> lvs
 LV      VG        Attr   LSize   Origin Snap%  Move Log Copy%  Convert
 lv_root vg_f11x64 -wi-a-   8.83G
 lv_swap vg_f11x64 -wi-a- 992.00M
 ><rescue> mount /dev/vg_f11x64/lv_root /sysroot
 ><rescue> ls /sysroot

This tool is just designed for quick interactive hacking on a virtual machine. For more structured access to a virtual machine disk image, you should use guestfs(3). To get a structured shell, use guestfish(1).

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.

--ro | -r

Open the image read-only.

The option must always be used if the disk image or virtual machine might be running, and is generally recommended in cases where you don't need write access to the disk.

SEE ALSO

guestfs(3), guestfish(1), virt-cat(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.