Re: [Libguestfs] Standalone guestfs

On Sat, 01 Jun 2013 20:54:15 +0100, Richard W.M. Jones wrote: > On Sat, Jun 01, 2013 at 02:27:50PM +0000, Gabriel de Perthuis wrote: >> Hello, >> As I understand it guestfs appliances normally work as servers >> and run high-level commands from some external channel. > > This is the normal architecture when you're using libguestfs to access > a VM or disk image: > > http://libguestfs.org/guestfs.3.html#architecture > >> But it might be possible to bundle a guestfish script to run >> commands from and do away with the external system. >> That would make it useful on non-virtualised systems. > > It's worth noting you can edit any device, including host devices > directly. For example on my laptop: > > It's also possible to get libguestfs to connect to an arbitrary > socket, so-called 'libguestfs live'. That could include a guestfsd > daemon running on the local host. Run the daemon and set > LIBGUESTFS_BACKEND=unix:/path/to/some/socket > > http://libguestfs.org/guestfs.3.html#backend > https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2011/07/07/how-does-libguestfs-live-work/#content > > It would also be possible to run qemu-nbd or sshd on a physical > machine and access it using libguestfs (>= 1.22) from another machine. > Indeed this is a possible architecture under discussion for the new > version of virt-v2v. > > Hope that gives you some ideas. If you have a specific use scenario > you are interested in, then please let us know. I was thinking of running some operations on the root filesystem by kexec-rebooting into an appliance to get exclusive access.

I would like to do something like that for my blocks tool (which does conversions to LVM and bcache). https://github.com/g2p/blocks#readme