virt-tar1

Usage

Obsolete

This tool is obsolete. Use virt-copy-in(1), virt-copy-out(1), virt-tar-in(1), virt-tar-out(1) as replacements.

Examples

Download "/home" from the VM into a local tarball:

 virt-tar -x domname /home home.tar
 virt-tar -zx domname /home home.tar.gz

Upload a local tarball and unpack it inside "/tmp" in the VM:

 virt-tar -u domname uploadstuff.tar /tmp
 virt-tar -zu domname uploadstuff.tar.gz /tmp

Warning

You must not use "virt-tar" with the -u option (upload) on live virtual machines. If you do this, you risk disk corruption in the VM. "virt-tar" tries to stop you from doing this, but doesn't catch all cases.

You can use -x (extract) on live virtual machines, but you might get inconsistent results or errors if there is filesystem activity inside the VM. If the live VM is synched and quiescent, then "virt-tar" will usually work, but the only way to guarantee consistent results is if the virtual machine is shut down.

Overview

"virt-tar" is a general purpose archive tool for downloading and uploading parts of a guest filesystem. There are many possibilities: making backups, uploading data files, snooping on guest activity, fixing or customizing guests, etc.

If you want to just view a single file, use virt-cat(1). If you just want to edit a single file, use virt-edit(1). For more complex cases you should look at the guestfish(1) tool.

There are two modes of operation: -x (eXtract) downloads a directory and its contents (recursively) from the virtual machine into a local tarball. -u uploads from a local tarball, unpacking it into a directory inside the virtual machine. You cannot use these two options together.

In addition, you may need to use the -z (gZip) option to enable compression. When uploading, you have to specify -z if the upload file is compressed because virt-tar won't detect this on its own.

"virt-tar" can only handle tar (optionally gzipped) format tarballs. For example it cannot do PKZip files or bzip2 compression. If you want that then you'll have to rebuild the tarballs yourself. (This is a limitation of the libguestfs(3) API).

Options

--help

Display brief help.

--version

Display version number and exit.

-c URI

--connect 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.

--format raw

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.

-x

--extract

--download

-u

--upload

Use -x to extract (download) a directory from a virtual machine to a local tarball.

Use -u to upload and unpack from a local tarball into a virtual machine. Please read the "WARNING" section above before using this option.

You must specify exactly one of these options.

-z

--gzip

Specify that the input or output tarball is gzip-compressed.