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.
Please note, virt-clone does not change anything _inside_ the guest OS, it only duplicates disks and does host side changes. So things like changing passwords, changing static IP address, etc are outside the scope of this tool. For these types of changes, please see virt-sysprep.
GENERAL 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.- --connect URI
- Connect to a non-default hypervisor. See virt-install(1) for details
- -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
- -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.
- --reflink
- When --reflink is specified, perform a lightweight copy. This is much faster if source images and destination images are all on the same btrfs filesystem. If COW copy is not possible, then virt-clone fails.
- -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.
- --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.
- -h
- --help
- Show the help message and exit
- --version
- Show program's version number and exit
- --check
- Enable or disable some validation checks. See virt-install(1) for more details.
- -q
- --quiet
- Suppress non-error output.
- -d
- --debug
- Print debugging information to the terminal when running the install process. The debugging information is also stored in "~/.cache/virt-manager/virt-clone.log" even if this parameter is omitted.
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 \
--original demo \
--name newdemo \
--file /dev/HostVG/DemoVM \
--mac 52:54:00:34:11:54