I've added a few patches upstream to make static linking work, and it is [surprisingly] possible to get it to work. You'll have to check out libguestfs from git. Read the README file very carefully, and get familiar with building from source. This is easier on a recent Fedora machine or VM. Once you are comfortable building libguestfs from source, configure it like this: ./configure --without-libvirt --enable-static make clean make To build a static virt-rescue you'll need to first build or install the following static libraries: *-static in Fedora? file no self-built fuse no self-built glibc yes libconfig no self-built pcre yes xz (liblzma) yes yajl no self-built zlib yes and then build a static virt-rescue binary like this: make -C rescue clean make -C rescue all CFLAGS=-static LDFLAGS=-all-static V=1 $ ll rescue/virt-rescue -rwxrwxr-x. 1 rjones rjones 8170304 Mar 28 10:27 rescue/virt-rescue $ file rescue/virt-rescue rescue/virt-rescue: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (GNU/Linux), statically linked, for GNU/Linux 2.6.32, BuildID[sha1]=7de92afbc9da27ea97d6312638b4f6f368dfb628, not stripped Now build a fixed appliance[1]: mkdir /tmp/appliance ./run libguestfs-make-fixed-appliance /tmp/appliance Now you have all the bits required for a static virt-rescue. I'll assume that qemu exists on the Xen server, or you can just install that from a package, or build a recent qemu from source on the Xen server. You'll need a recent qemu, so if the Xen server has some old qemu then it's not going to work - build qemu from source in that case. Copy the virt-rescue binary and the fixed appliance directory to the Xen server. Note that the fixed appliance contains a large sparse file ('root'), and if you don't use the appropriate method to copy it, then you'll end up making it non-sparse and taking a large amount of space. Run it like this: export LIBGUESTFS_QEMU=/path/to/qemu export LIBGUESTFS_PATH=/path/to/appliance ./virt-rescue [normal parameters ...] If it doesn't work, then also set: export LIBGUESTFS_DEBUG=1 export LIBGUESTFS_TRACE=1 Good luck! Rich. [1] http://libguestfs.org/libguestfs-make-fixed-appliance.1.html -- Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones Read my programming and virtualization blog: http://rwmj.wordpress.com Fedora Windows cross-compiler. Compile Windows programs, test, and build Windows installers. Over 100 libraries supported. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/MinGW