This might be of interest to developers on this list. I've written an NBD server which can serve libvirt guest disks. It uses the virDomainBlockPeek API and so is necessarily read-only. https://github.com/libguestfs/nbdkit https://github.com/libguestfs/nbdkit/tree/master/plugins/libvirt Example: $ sudo ./src/nbdkit ./plugins/libvirt/.libs/libnbdkit-libvirt-plugin.so domain=f18x64 disk=vda -f -v In another window: $ guestfish --format=raw -a nbd://localhost -i Welcome to guestfish, the guest filesystem shell for editing virtual machine filesystems and disk images. Type: 'help' for help on commands 'man' to read the manual 'quit' to quit the shell Operating system: Fedora release 18 (Spherical Cow) /dev/fedora/root mounted on / /dev/sda1 mounted on /boot total 90 dr-xr-xr-x. 18 root root 4096 Jan 9 17:14 . drwxr-xr-x 23 1000 1000 4096 Jun 21 15:24 .. lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 7 Jan 9 17:14 bin -> usr/bin dr-xr-xr-x. 5 root root 1024 Mar 13 23:00 boot drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4096 Feb 11 20:15 dev drwxr-xr-x. 129 root root 12288 Mar 14 15:22 etc drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 4096 Feb 11 20:23 home lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 7 Jan 9 17:14 lib -> usr/lib lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 9 Jan 9 17:14 lib64 -> usr/lib64 drwx------. 2 root root 16384 Jan 9 17:12 lost+found drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4096 Jul 19 2012 media drwxr-xr-x. 4 root root 4096 Feb 12 08:59 mnt drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4096 Jul 19 2012 opt drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4096 Feb 11 20:15 proc dr-xr-x---. 6 root root 4096 Mar 13 22:55 root drwxr-xr-x. 26 root root 4096 Feb 11 20:20 run lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 8 Jan 9 17:14 sbin -> usr/sbin drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4096 Jul 19 2012 srv drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 4096 Feb 11 20:15 sys drwxrwxrwt. 16 root root 4096 Mar 13 23:00 tmp drwxr-xr-x. 13 root root 4096 Jan 9 17:14 usr drwxr-xr-x. 19 root root 4096 Jan 9 17:17 var Fedora release 18 (Spherical Cow) Rich. -- Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones virt-top is 'top' for virtual machines. Tiny program with many powerful monitoring features, net stats, disk stats, logging, etc. http://people.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-top