NAME¶
virt-clone - clone existing virtual machine images
SYNOPSIS¶
virt-clone [OPTION]...
DESCRIPTION¶
virt-clone is a command line tool for cloning existing virtual machine
images using the "libvirt" hypervisor management library. It will
copy the disk images of any existing virtual machine, and define a new guest
with an identical virtual hardware configuration. Elements which require
uniqueness will be updated to avoid a clash between old and new guests.
By default, virt-clone will show an error if the necessary information to clone
the guest is not provided. The --auto-clone option will generate all needed
input, aside from the source guest to clone. An interactive mode is available
with the --prompt option, but this will only ask for the minimum required
options.
OPTIONS¶
Most options are not required. Minimum requirements are --original or
--original-xml (to specify the guest to clone), --name, and appropriate
storage options via -file.
- -h, --help
- Show the help message and exit
- --connect=CONNECT
- Connect to a non-default hypervisor. See
virt-install(1) for details
General Options¶
General configuration parameters that apply to all guest clones.
- -o ORIGINAL_GUEST, --original=ORIGINAL_GUEST
- Name of the original guest to be cloned. This guest must be
shut off or paused since it is not possible to safely clone active guests
at this time.
- --original-xml=ORIGINAL_XML
- Libvirt guest xml file to use as the original guest. The
guest does not need to be defined on the libvirt connection. This takes
the place of the "--original" parameter.
- --auto-clone
- Generate a new guest name, and paths for new storage.
An example or possible generated output:
Original name : MyVM
Generated clone name : MyVM-clone
Original disk path : /home/user/foobar.img
Generated disk path : /home/user/foobar-clone.img
If generated names collide with existing VMs or storage, a number is
appended, such as foobar-clone-1.img, or MyVM-clone-3.
- -n NAME, --name=NAME
- Name of the new guest virtual machine instance. This must
be unique amongst all guests known to the hypervisor connection, including
those not currently active.
- -u UUID, --uuid=UUID
- UUID for the guest; if none is given a random UUID will be
generated. If you specify UUID, you should use a 32-digit hexadecimal
number. UUID are intended to be unique across the entire data center, and
indeed world. Bear this in mind if manually specifying a UUID
Storage Configuration¶
- -f DISKFILE, --file=DISKFILE
- Path to the file, disk partition, or logical volume to use
as the backing store for the new guest's virtual disk. If the original
guest has multiple disks, this parameter must be repeated multiple times,
once per disk in the original virtual machine.
- --force-copy=TARGET
- Force cloning the passed disk target ('hdc', 'sda', etc.).
By default, "virt-clone" will skip certain disks, such as those
marked 'readonly' or 'shareable'.
- --nonsparse
- Fully allocate the new storage if the path being cloned is
a sparse file. See virt-install(1) for more details on sparse vs.
nonsparse.
- --preserve-data
- No storage is cloned: disk images specific by --file are
preserved as is, and referenced in the new clone XML. This is useful if
you want to clone a VM XML template, but not the storage contents.
Networking Configuration¶
- -m MAC, --mac=MAC
- Fixed MAC address for the guest; If this parameter is
omitted, or the value "RANDOM" is specified a suitable address
will be randomly generated. Addresses are applied sequentially to the
networks as they are listed in the original guest XML.
Miscellaneous Options¶
- --print-xml
- Print the generated clone XML and exit without
cloning.
- --replace
- Shutdown and remove any existing guest with the passed
"--name" before cloning the original guest.
- -d, --debug
- Print debugging information to the terminal when running
the install process. The debugging information is also stored in
"$HOME/.virtinst/virt-clone.log" even if this parameter is
omitted.
- --force
- Prevent interactive prompts. If the intended prompt was a
yes/no prompt, always say yes. For any other prompts, the application will
exit.
- --prompt
- Specifically enable prompting for required information.
Default prompting is off.
EXAMPLES¶
Clone the guest called "demo" on the default connection, auto
generating a new name and disk clone path.
# virt-clone \
--original demo \
--auto-clone
Clone the guest called "demo" which has a single disk to copy
# virt-clone \
--original demo \
--name newdemo \
--file /var/lib/xen/images/newdemo.img
Clone a QEMU guest with multiple disks
# virt-clone \
--connect qemu:///system \
--original demo \
--name newdemo \
--file /var/lib/xen/images/newdemo.img \
--file /var/lib/xen/images/newdata.img
Clone a guest to a physical device which is at least as big as the original
guests disks. If the destination device is bigger, the new guest can do a
filesystem resize when it boots.
# virt-clone \
--connect qemu:///system \
--name demo \
--file /dev/HostVG/DemoVM \
--mac 52:54:00:34:11:54
AUTHOR¶
Written by Kazuki Mizushima, and a team of many other contributors. See the
AUTHORS file in the source distribution for the complete list of credits.
BUGS¶
Please see
http://virt-manager.org/page/BugReporting
COPYRIGHT¶
Copyright (C) Fujitsu Limited 2007, and various contributors. This is free
software. You may redistribute copies of it under the terms of the GNU General
Public License "
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html". There is NO
WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
SEE ALSO¶
virsh(1), "
virt-install(1)", "
virt-manager(1)", the project
website "
http://virt-manager.org"