VIRT-CLONE(1)

NAME
virt-clone - clone existing virtual machine images

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. An interactive mode is available with the --prompt option, but this will only ask for the minimum required options.

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.

-h, --help
    Show the help message and exit

--connect=URI
    Connect to a non-default hypervisor. See virt-install(1) for details

  General Options
General configuration parameters that apply to all guest clones.

-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

  Storage Configuration

-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.

  Networking Configuration

-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.

  Miscellaneous Options

--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.

-d, --debug
    Print debugging information to the terminal when running the install process. The debugging information is also stored in "$HOME/.virtinst/virt-clone.log" even if this parameter is omitted.

--force
    Prevent interactive prompts. If the intended prompt was a yes/no prompt, always say yes. For any other prompts, the application will exit.

--prompt
    Specifically enable prompting for required information. Default prompting is off.

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

AUTHOR
Written by Kazuki Mizushima, Cole Robinson, and a team of many other contributors. See the AUTHORS file in the source distribution for the complete list of credits.

BUGS
Please see http://virt-manager.org/page/BugReporting

COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) Fujitsu Limited, and various contributors. This is free software. You may redistribute copies of it under the terms of the GNU General Public License "http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html". There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

SEE ALSO
virsh(1), "virt-install(1)", "virt-manager(1)", the project website "http://virt-manager.org"