INCUS.IMAGE.GENERATE-METADATA(1)

💖 NAME 💖

incus-image-generate-metadata — okay so this is the little cutie from the Incus - Command line client(1) family of man pages, and its whole job is generating a metadata tarball. That's it. That's the job. ✨

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

incus image generate-metadata  [flags]

That's the whole vibe. Two spaces before [flags], exactly like that, no I will not be spacing-shame-ing the man page. 🫶

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🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

So, the short version the page gives us: Generate a metadata tarball. Periodt. 💅

But like, here's the actual tea, bestie: this command produces an incus.tar.xz tarball that you're gonna use during import, alongside an existing QCOW2 or squashfs disk image. That's the whole point of it existing. Iconic behavior honestly. 🦋

And the way it works? It prompts you for every single one of the metadata tarball fields. All of them. It doesn't just guess, it asks, like a polite queen:

• Operating system name
• Release
• Variant
• Architecture
• Description

Answer the questions, get your tarball. No cap. 👑

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💅 OPTIONS INHERITED FROM PARENT COMMANDS 💅

These bad boys aren't even this command's own flags, they're just vibing here because they're inherited from the parent command. Still crucial though, lowkey:

• --debug[=false] — shows you all the debug messages. Every last one. 🐛
• --explain[=false] — if the command is valid, this explains its parsed arguments instead of running it. It's giving "let me read the room before I do anything." 🔍
• --force-local[=false] — forces using the local unix socket. Local only, no traveling. 🏠
• -h, --help[=false] — print help. The eternal bestie move. 🙋
• --project="" — overrides the source project``
• -q, --quiet[=false] — don't show progress information. Shhh era. 🤫
• --sub-commands[=false] — use this with help or --help to view sub-commands. It's the backstage pass. 🎟️
• -v, --verbose[=false] — show all information messages. Tell me EVERYTHING. 🗣️
• --version[=false] — print the version number. ✨

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👀 SEE ALSO 👀

• incus-image(1) — go read that one too, it's the parent, it's family. 💜

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📜 HISTORY 📜

• 24-Sep-2026 — auto generated by spf13/cobra

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ngl bestie, this whole page was auto generated by spf13/cobra, in Sep 2026, for the Incus - Command line client(1) manual. So if you ever wondered who wrote it… it was a robot, and the robot ate. 💀✨ 🎀