Inspect Guest Disk Contents

This procedure only works for unencrypted disks, or disks where the encryption key is known!

List VMs

qm list

List VMs on PVE node

Get VM disk storage path

On a default installation, you'd swap Guest_Disks with local-lvm -- e.g. local-lvm:vm-9990-disk-0

pvesm path Guest_Disks:vm-9990-disk-0

/dev/zvol/rackdrives/vm-9990-disk-0

Example using VM with ID 9990 and disk stored on ZFS volume, "Guest_Disks"

Get VM disk format

pvesm list Guest_Disks --vmid 9990

Guest_Disks:vm-9990-disk-0 raw     images    8589934592 9990

Get the format of the guest disk, disk format is "raw"

Convert raw disk to qcow2

This command runs without producing output, so be patient, especially if converting a larger disk.

qemu-img convert -f raw -O qcow2 /dev/zvol/rackdrives/vm-9990-disk-0 /tmp/9990.qcow2

Store converted disk at /tmp/9990.qcow2

Install Tooling on PVE node

apt install -y libguestfs-tools

Inspect disk files

guestfish --ro -a /tmp/9990.qcow2 -i

Press the "TAB" key twice to see a list of available commands

><fs> cat /etc/hosts

Inspect /etc/hosts on VM disk