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NAME
    virt-df - 'df'-like utility for virtualization stats

SUMMARY
    virt-df [-options]

DESCRIPTION
    virt-df is a df(1)-like utility for showing the actual disk usage of
    guests. Many command line options are the same as for ordinary *df*.

    It uses libvirt so it is capable of showing stats across a variety of
    different virtualization systems.

    There are some shortcomings to the whole approach of reading disk state
    from outside the guest. Please read SHORTCOMINGS section below for more
    details.

OPTIONS
    -a, --all
        Show all domains. The default is show only running (active) domains.

    -c uri, --connect uri
        Connect to libvirt URI. The default is to connect to the default
        libvirt URI, normally Xen.

    -h, --human-readable
        Display human-readable sizes (eg. 10GiB).

    -i, --inodes
        Display inode information.

    --help
        Display usage summary.

    --version
        Display version and exit.

SHORTCOMINGS
    virt-df spies on the guest's disk image to try to work out how much disk
    space it is actually using. There are some shortcomings to this,
    described here.

    (1) It does not work over remote connections. The storage API does not
    support peeking into remote disks, and libvirt has rejected a request to
    add this support.

    (2) It only understands a limited set of partition types. Assuming that
    the files and partitions that we get back from libvirt / Xen correspond
    to block devices in the guests, we can go some way towards manually
    parsing those partitions to find out what they contain. We can read the
    MBR, LVM, superblocks and so on. However that's a lot of parsing work,
    and currently there is no library which understands a wide range of
    partition schemes and filesystem types (not even libparted which doesn't
    support LVM yet). The Linux kernel does support that, but there's not
    really any good way to access that work.

    The current implementation uses a hand-coded parser which understands
    some simple formats (MBR, LVM2, ext2/3). In future we should use
    something like libparted.

    (3) The statistics you get are delayed. The real state of, for example,
    an ext2 filesystem is only stored in the memory of the guest's kernel.
    The ext2 superblock contains some meta-information about blocks used and
    free, but this superblock is not up to date. In fact the guest kernel
    may not update it even on a 'sync', not until the filesystem is
    unmounted. Some operations do appear to write the superblock, for
    example fsync(2) [that is my reading of the ext2/3 source code at
    least].

SECURITY
    The current code is probably not secure against malicious guests. In
    particular a malicious guest can set up a disk in such a way that disk
    structures with loops can cause virt-df to spin forever. We are
    preparing a parsing library which can fix these sorts of problems.

    In the meantime, do not run virt-df on untrusted guests.

SEE ALSO
    df(1), virsh(1), xm(1), <http://www.libvirt.org/ocaml/>,
    <http://www.libvirt.org/>, <http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/>,
    <http://caml.inria.fr/>

AUTHORS
    Richard W.M. Jones <rjones @ redhat . com>

COPYRIGHT
    (C) Copyright 2007-2008 Red Hat Inc., Richard W.M. Jones
    http://libvirt.org/

    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
    under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
    Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your
    option) any later version.

    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
    WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General
    Public License for more details.

    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
    with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
    675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

REPORTING BUGS
    Bugs can be viewed on the Red Hat Bugzilla page:
    <https://bugzilla.redhat.com/>.

    If you find a bug in virt-df, please follow these steps to report it:

    1. Check for existing bug reports
        Go to <https://bugzilla.redhat.com/> and search for similar bugs.
        Someone may already have reported the same bug, and they may even
        have fixed it.

    2. Capture debug and error messages
        Run

         virt-df > virt-df.log 2>&1

        and keep *virt-df.log*. It contains error messages which you should
        submit with your bug report.

    3. Get version of virt-df and version of libvirt.
        Run

         virt-df --version

    4. Submit a bug report.
        Go to <https://bugzilla.redhat.com/> and enter a new bug. Please
        describe the problem in as much detail as possible.

        Remember to include the version numbers (step 3) and the debug
        messages file (step 2).

    5. Assign the bug to rjones @ redhat.com
        Assign or reassign the bug to rjones @ redhat.com (without the
        spaces). You can also send me an email with the bug number if you
        want a faster response.