virt-tar-in(1)

📦
version 1.61.3 · 14 versions
, in centos-stream 10

💖 virt-tar-in(1) — the libguestfs girlies' guide 💖

okay so picture this: it's a manual page, it lives in the Virtualization Support section of libguestfs land, and it's literally about shoving a tarball into a disk image. bestie, it's giving "unpack and slay." 💅

✨ NAME ✨

virt-tar-in — unpack a tarball into a virtual machine disk image. no cap, that's the whole vibe. 🎀

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

virt-tar-in -a disk.img data.tar /destination

virt-tar-in -d domain data.tar /destination

zcat data.tar.gz | virt-tar-in -d domain - /destination

three iconic ways to do it, pick your fighter 💜

🚨 WARNING 🚨

okay this is the part where we get serious for a sec, because this is not a drill:

Using virt-tar-in on live virtual machines, or concurrently with other disk editing tools, can be dangerous — potentially causing disk corruption. 😭😭😭

The virtual machine must be shut down before you use this command, and disk images must not be edited concurrently.

like, fr fr, shut it down first. no multitasking on the same disk. not the moment to be brave. 💀

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

virt-tar-in unpacks an uncompressed tarball into a virtual machine disk image or named libvirt domain. (key word: uncompressed — she said what she said ✨)

So here's how the args work:

  • The first parameter is the tar file. Use - to read the tar file from standard input. yep, the humble hyphen, main character of pipes everywhere 🫶
  • The second parameter is the absolute target directory to unpack into. absolute. not relative. don't try it. 🙈

🎀 EXAMPLES 🎀

Upload a home directory to a guest — this is the classic, the blueprint, the moment:

virt-tar-in -d MyGuest homes.tar /home

ate. no crumbs. 🔥

🧚 JUST A SHELL SCRIPT WRAPPER AROUND GUESTFISH 🧚

ngl, this command is just a simple shell script wrapper around the guestfish(1) tar-in command. that's it. that's the tea. ☕

So if you want to do anything more complex than a trivial copy, you are probably better off using guestfish directly. like, go to the source, bestie. she has range. 👑

💅 OPTIONS 💅

Since the shell script just passes options straight to guestfish, read guestfish(1) to see the full list of options. that's the whole section. the options live over there. iykyk 🦋

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

the whole friend group, assembled:

go say hi to all of them 💖

👑 AUTHORS 👑

Richard W.M. Jones (rjones at redhat dot com) — the legend, the icon, the moment. ✨

Copyright (C) 2011-2025 Red Hat Inc. 🎀

💜 LICENSE 💜

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., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.

(translation: it's free, it's GPL, and it comes with zero promises. read the license, it's literally right there 🫶)

🐛 BUGS 🐛

found a bug? iconic of you. here's where to go:

To get a list of bugs against libguestfs, use this link: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/buglist.cgi?component=libguestfs&product=Virtualization+Tools

To report a new bug against libguestfs, use this link: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/enter_bug.cgi?component=libguestfs&product=Virtualization+Tools

When reporting a bug, please supply:

  • The version of libguestfs.
  • Where you got libguestfs (eg. which Linux distro, compiled from source, etc)
  • Describe the bug accurately and give a way to reproduce it.
  • Run libguestfs-test-tool(1) and paste the complete, unedited output into the bug report. (complete AND unedited, bestie, don't trim it 🙈)

and that's the page!! brought to you by libguestfs-1.61.3, dated 2026-09-16, filed under virt-tar-in(1). mwah 💋✨ 🦋🌸🎀

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