Libguestfs

Article summary

libguestfs is a C library and a set of tools for accessing and modifying virtual disk images used in platform virtualization. The tools can be used for viewing and editing virtual machines (VMs) managed by libvirt and files inside VMs, scripting changes to VMs, creating VMs, and much else besides. It was created to avoid security issues that occur when virtual disk images are mounted directly on the host system. libguestfs can access nearly any type of file system including: all known types of Linux filesystem (ext2/3/4, XFS, btrfs, etc.), any Windows filesystem (VFAT and NTFS), any Mac OS X and BSD filesystems, LVM2 volume management, MBR and GPT disk partitions, raw disks, qcow2, VirtualBox VDI, VMWare VMDK, Hyper-V VHD/VHDX, on files, local devices, CD and DVD ISOs, SD cards, or remotely over FTP, HTTP, SSH, iSCSI, NBD, GlusterFS, Ceph, Sheepdog, and much more. libguestfs does not require root permissions. The C API for libguestfs can be linked with C and C++ programs. It has official bindings for Perl, Python, Ruby, Rust, Java, OCaml, PHP, Haskell, Erlang, Lua, Golang and C#. libguestfs comes with command-line programs that allows use from shell scripts or in the command line. It has two "shells" of its own providing for interactive use, for general operations and for fixing unbootable virtual machines.…

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