Re: [libvirt-users] Suggestions on building VM disks from scratch

First of all, debug this properly: (1) What is the full error message? (2) What is the complete, unedited output of 'libguestfs-test-tool'? (3) What version of libguestfs & febootstrap are using and where did you get them from? You can post the details on our mailing list libguestfs(a)redhat.com (no need to subscribe if you don't want to). Assuming the filesystem was in /tmp/root.tar.gz, the following code will do this: guestfish <<EOF sparse /tmp/test.img 11G run part-init /dev/sda mbr # 9GB sda1 part-add /dev/sda p 64 $(( 9*1024*1024*2 )) # remainder in sda2 part-add /dev/sda p $(( 9*1024*1024*2 + 1 )) -64 mkfs ext4 /dev/sda1 mkswap /dev/sda2 mount /dev/sda1 / tgz-in /tmp/root.tar.gz / EOF Example: $ sh test.sh $ virt-df -a test.img -h Filesystem Size Used Available Use% test.img:/dev/sda1 9.0G 276M 8.3G 4% $ ll -h test.img -rw-rw-r--. 1 rjones rjones 11G Apr 4 09:39 test.img Whether this would actually boot is another question: you may also need to add some grub commands to set up the bootloader, *or* (better and easier IMHO) set up libvirt so that it boots from an external kernel + initrd. It's not the first time that someone has asked for rsync, and it wouldn't be too hard to add. However note that rsync really gives you no benefit when you're creating a filesystem from scratch, because there's no original to rsync against. If you are updating a filesystem image then rsync makes sense. Rich. -- Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones libguestfs lets you edit virtual machines. Supports shell scripting, bindings from many languages. http://libguestfs.org