It is documented that a command to run inside the container can be passed with the -c arg. virt-login-shell -c "ls -l /" This fixes commit 4feeb2d986b98013ebfb1d41ab6b9007b6cce6e2 Author: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange(a)redhat.com&gt; Date: Thu Aug 1 10:58:31 2019 +0100 tools: split virt-login-shell into two binaries Signed-off-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange(a)redhat.com&gt; --- tools/virt-login-shell.c | 15 ++++++++++++--- 1 file changed, 12 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/tools/virt-login-shell.c b/tools/virt-login-shell.c index f92cc0a749..f5aa02420b 100644 --- a/tools/virt-login-shell.c +++ b/tools/virt-login-shell.c @@ -38,11 +38,13 @@ int main(int argc, char **argv) { char uidstr[INT_BUFSIZE_BOUND(uid_t)]; char gidstr[INT_BUFSIZE_BOUND(gid_t)]; - const char *const newargv[] = { + const char * newargv[] = { LIBEXECDIR "/virt-login-shell-helper", uidstr, gidstr, NULL, + NULL, + NULL, }; char *newenv[] = { NULL, @@ -60,8 +62,15 @@ int main(int argc, char **argv) { exit(EXIT_FAILURE); } - if (argc != 1) { - fprintf(stderr, "%s: no arguments expected\n", argv[0]); + if (argc == 3) { + if (strcmp(argv[1], "-c") != 0) { + fprintf(stderr, "%s: syntax: %s [-c CMDSTR]\n", argv[0], argv[0]); + exit(EXIT_FAILURE); + } + newargv[3] = argv[1]; + newargv[4] = argv[2]; + } else if (argc != 1) { + fprintf(stderr, "%s: syntax: %s [-c CMDSTR]\n", argv[0], argv[0]); exit(EXIT_FAILURE); } -- 2.21.0