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21.5. Other Commands

This section describes tools that are simpler equivalents to using guestfish to view and edit guest virtual machine disk images.
  • virt-cat is similar to the guestfish download command. It downloads and displays a single file to the guest virtual machine. For example: 
    # virt-cat RHEL3 /etc/ntp.conf | grep ^server
 server	    127.127.1.0	      # local clock
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  • virt-edit is similar to the guestfish edit command. It can be used to interactively edit a single file within a guest virtual machine. For example, you may need to edit the grub.conf file in a Linux-based guest virtual machine that will not boot: 
    # virt-edit LinuxGuest /boot/grub/grub.confvirt-edit LinuxGuest /boot/grub/grub.confvirt-edit LinuxGuest /boot/grub/grub.conf
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    virt-edit has another mode where it can be used to make simple non-interactive changes to a single file. For this, the -e option is used. For example, the following command changes the root password in a Linux guest virtual machine to having no password: 
    # virt-edit LinuxGuest /etc/passwd -e 's/^root:.*?:/root::/'virt-edit LinuxGuest /etc/passwd -e 's/^root:.*?:/root::/'virt-edit LinuxGuest /etc/passwd -e 's/^root:.*?:/root::/'
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  • virt-ls is similar to the guestfish ls, ll and find commands. It is used to list a directory or directories (recursively). For example, the following command would recursively list files and directories under /home in a Linux guest virtual machine: 
    # virt-ls -R LinuxGuest /home/ | lessvirt-ls -R LinuxGuest /home/ | lessvirt-ls -R LinuxGuest /home/ | less
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