NAME¶
virt-edit - Edit a file in a virtual machine
SYNOPSIS¶
virt-edit [--options] -d domname file [file ...]
virt-edit [--options] -a disk.img [-a disk.img ...] file [file ...]
virt-edit [-d domname|-a disk.img] file -e 'expr'
Old-style:
virt-edit domname file
virt-edit disk.img [disk.img ...] file
WARNING¶
You must
not use "virt-edit" on live virtual machines. If you
do this, you risk disk corruption in the VM. "virt-edit" tries to
stop you from doing this, but doesn't catch all cases.
DESCRIPTION¶
"virt-edit" is a command line tool to edit "file" where each
"file" exists in the named virtual machine (or disk image).
Multiple filenames can be given, in which case they are each edited in turn.
Each filename must be a full path, starting at the root directory (starting
with '/').
If you want to just view a file, use
virt-cat(1).
For more complex cases you should look at the
guestfish(1) tool (see
"USING GUESTFISH" below).
"virt-edit" cannot be used to create a new file.
guestfish(1)
can do that and much more.
EXAMPLES¶
Edit the named files interactively:
virt-edit -d mydomain /boot/grub/grub.conf
virt-edit -d mydomain /etc/passwd
For Windows guests, some Windows paths are understood:
virt-edit -d mywindomain 'c:\autoexec.bat'
If Perl is installed, you can also edit files non-interactively (see
"NON-INTERACTIVE EDITING" below). To change the init default level
to 5:
virt-edit -d mydomain /etc/inittab -e 's/^id:.*/id:5:initdefault:/'
OPTIONS¶
- --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.
- -b extension
- --backup extension
- Create a backup of the original file in the guest disk
image. The backup has the original filename with "extension"
added.
Usually the first character of "extension" would be a dot
"." so you would write:
virt-edit -b .orig [etc]
By default, no backup file is made.
- -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.
- -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-edit 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.
- -e EXPR
- --expr EXPR
- Instead of launching the external editor, non-interactively
apply the Perl expression "EXPR" to each line in the file. See
"NON-INTERACTIVE EDITING" below.
Be careful to properly quote the expression to prevent it from being altered
by the shell.
Note that this option is only available when Perl 5 is installed.
- --format raw|qcow2|...
- --format
- The default for the -a option is to auto-detect the
format of the disk image. Using this forces the disk format for -a
options which follow on the command line. Using --format with no
argument switches back to auto-detection for subsequent -a options.
For example:
virt-edit --format=raw -a disk.img file
forces raw format (no auto-detection) for "disk.img".
virt-edit --format=raw -a disk.img --format -a another.img file
forces raw format (no auto-detection) for "disk.img" and reverts
to auto-detection for "another.img".
If you have untrusted raw-format guest disk images, you should use this
option to specify the disk format. This avoids a possible security problem
with malicious guests (CVE-2010-3851).
- --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".
- -v
- --verbose
- Enable verbose messages for debugging.
- -V
- --version
- Display version number and exit.
- -x
- Enable tracing of libguestfs API calls.
OLD-STYLE COMMAND LINE ARGUMENTS¶
Previous versions of virt-edit allowed you to write either:
virt-edit disk.img [disk.img ...] file
or
virt-edit guestname file
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.
NON-INTERACTIVE EDITING¶
"virt-edit" normally calls out to $EDITOR (or vi) so the system
administrator can interactively edit the file.
There are two ways also to use "virt-edit" from scripts in order to
make automated edits to files. (Note that although you
can use
"virt-edit" like this, it's less error-prone to write scripts
directly using the libguestfs API and Augeas for configuration file editing.)
The first method is to temporarily set $EDITOR to any script or program you want
to run. The script is invoked as "$EDITOR tmpfile" and it should
update "tmpfile" in place however it likes.
The second method is to use the
-e parameter of "virt-edit" to
run a short Perl snippet in the style of
sed(1). For example to replace
all instances of "foo" with "bar" in a file:
virt-edit -d domname filename -e 's/foo/bar/'
The full power of Perl regular expressions can be used (see
perlre(1)).
For example to delete root's password you could do:
virt-edit -d domname /etc/passwd -e 's/^root:.*?:/root::/'
What really happens is that the snippet is evaluated as a Perl expression for
each line of the file. The line, including the final "\n", is passed
in $_ and the expression should update $_ or leave it unchanged.
To delete a line, set $_ to the empty string. For example, to delete the
"apache" user account from the password file you can do:
virt-edit -d mydomain /etc/passwd -e '$_ = "" if /^apache:/'
To insert a line, prepend or append it to $_. However appending lines to the end
of the file is rather difficult this way since there is no concept of
"last line of the file" - your expression just doesn't get called
again. You might want to use the first method (setting $EDITOR) if you want to
do this.
The variable $lineno contains the current line number. As is traditional, the
first line in the file is number 1.
The return value from the expression is ignored, but the expression may call
"die" in order to abort the whole program, leaving the original file
untouched.
Remember when matching the end of a line that $_ may contain the final
"\n", or (for DOS files) "\r\n", or if the file does not
end with a newline then neither of these. Thus to match or substitute some
text at the end of a line, use this regular expression:
/some text(\r?\n)?$/
Alternately, use the perl "chomp" function, being careful not to chomp
$_ itself (since that would remove all newlines from the file):
my $m = $_; chomp $m; $m =~ /some text$/
WINDOWS PATHS¶
"virt-edit" has a limited ability to understand Windows drive letters
and paths (eg. "E:\foo\bar.txt").
If and only if the guest is running Windows then:
- •
- Drive letter prefixes like "C:" are resolved
against the Windows Registry to the correct filesystem.
- •
- Any backslash ("\") characters in the path are
replaced with forward slashes so that libguestfs can process it.
- •
- The path is resolved case insensitively to locate the file
that should be edited.
There are some known shortcomings:
- •
- Some NTFS symbolic links may not be followed
correctly.
- •
- NTFS junction points that cross filesystems are not
followed.
USING GUESTFISH¶
guestfish(1) is a more powerful, lower level tool which you can use when
"virt-edit" doesn't work.
Using "virt-edit" is approximately equivalent to doing:
guestfish --rw -i -d domname edit /file
where "domname" is the name of the libvirt guest, and
"/file" is the full path to the file.
The command above uses libguestfs's guest inspection feature and so does not
work on guests that libguestfs cannot inspect, or on things like arbitrary
disk images that don't contain guests. To edit a file on a disk image
directly, use:
guestfish --rw -a disk.img -m /dev/sda1 edit /file
where "disk.img" is the disk image, "/dev/sda1" is the
filesystem within the disk image to edit, and "/file" is the full
path to the file.
"virt-edit" cannot create new files. Use the guestfish commands
"touch", "write" or "upload" instead:
guestfish --rw -i -d domname touch /newfile
guestfish --rw -i -d domname write /newfile "new content"
guestfish --rw -i -d domname upload localfile /newfile
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES¶
- "EDITOR"
- If set, this string is used as the editor. It may contain
arguments, eg. "emacs -nw"
If not set, "vi" is used.
SHELL QUOTING¶
Libvirt guest names can contain arbitrary characters, some of which have meaning
to the shell such as "#" and space. You may need to quote or escape
these characters on the command line. See the shell manual page
sh(1)
for details.
EXIT STATUS¶
This program returns 0 if successful, or non-zero if there was an error.
SEE ALSO¶
guestfs(3),
guestfish(1),
virt-cat(1),
virt-copy-in(1),
virt-tar-in(1),
Sys::Guestfs(3),
Sys::Guestfs::Lib(3),
Sys::Virt(3),
<
http://libguestfs.org/>,
perl(1),
perlre(1).
AUTHOR¶
Richard W.M. Jones <
http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/>
COPYRIGHT¶
Copyright (C) 2009-2012 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.