The following commands are understood:
Machine Commands
list
List currently running (online) virtual machines and
containers. To enumerate machine images that can be started,
use list-images (see below). Note that this command hides the
special ".host" machine by default. Use the --all switch to
show it.
status NAME...
Show runtime status information about one or more virtual
machines and containers, followed by the most recent log data
from the journal. This function is intended to generate
human-readable output. If you are looking for
computer-parsable output, use show instead. Note that the log
data shown is reported by the virtual machine or container
manager, and frequently contains console output of the
machine, but not necessarily journal contents of the machine
itself.
show [NAME...]
Show properties of one or more registered virtual machines or
containers or the manager itself. If no argument is
specified, properties of the manager will be shown. If a NAME
is specified, properties of this virtual machine or container
are shown. By default, empty properties are suppressed. Use
--all to show those too. To select specific properties to
show, use --property=. This command is intended to be used
whenever computer-parsable output is required, and does not
print the control group tree or journal entries. Use status
if you are looking for formatted human-readable output.
start NAME...
Start a container as a system service, using
systemd-nspawn(1). This starts systemd-nspawn@.service,
instantiated for the specified machine name, similar to the
effect of systemctl start on the service name.
systemd-nspawn looks for a container image by the specified
name in /var/lib/machines/ (and other search paths, see
below) and runs it. Use list-images (see below) for listing
available container images to start.
Note that systemd-machined.service(8) also interfaces with a
variety of other container and VM managers, systemd-nspawn is
just one implementation of it. Most of the commands available
in machinectl may be used on containers or VMs controlled by
other managers, not just systemd-nspawn. Starting VMs and
container images on those managers requires manager-specific
tools.
To interactively start a container on the command line with
full access to the container's console, please invoke
systemd-nspawn directly. To stop a running container use
machinectl poweroff.
login [NAME]
Open an interactive terminal login session in a container or
on the local host. If an argument is supplied, it refers to
the container machine to connect to. If none is specified, or
the container name is specified as the empty string, or the
special machine name ".host" (see below) is specified, the
connection is made to the local host instead. This will
create a TTY connection to a specific container or the local
host and asks for the execution of a getty on it. Note that
this is only supported for containers running systemd(1) as
init system.
This command will open a full login prompt on the container
or the local host, which then asks for username and password.
Use shell (see below) or systemd-run(1) with the --machine=
switch to directly invoke a single command, either
interactively or in the background.
shell [[NAME@]NAME [PATH [ARGUMENTS...]]]
Open an interactive shell session in a container or on the
local host. The first argument refers to the container
machine to connect to. If none is specified, or the machine
name is specified as the empty string, or the special machine
name ".host" (see below) is specified, the connection is made
to the local host instead. This works similar to login but
immediately invokes a user process. This command runs the
specified executable with the specified arguments, or the
default shell for the user if none is specified, or /bin/sh
if no default shell is found. By default, --uid=, or by
prefixing the machine name with a username and an "@"
character, a different user may be selected. Use --setenv= to
set environment variables for the executed process.
Note that machinectl shell does not propagate the exit
code/status of the invoked shell process. Use systemd-run
instead if that information is required (see below).
When using the shell command without arguments, (thus
invoking the executed shell or command on the local host), it
is in many ways similar to a su(1) session, but, unlike su,
completely isolates the new session from the originating
session, so that it shares no process or session properties,
and is in a clean and well-defined state. It will be tracked
in a new utmp, login, audit, security and keyring session,
and will not inherit any environment variables or resource
limits, among other properties.
Note that systemd-run(1) with its --machine= switch may be
used in place of the machinectl shell command, and allows
non-interactive operation, more detailed and low-level
configuration of the invoked unit, as well as access to
runtime and exit code/status information of the invoked shell
process. In particular, use systemd-run's --wait switch to
propagate exit status information of the invoked process. Use
systemd-run's --pty switch for acquiring an interactive
shell, similar to machinectl shell. In general, systemd-run
is preferable for scripting purposes. However, note that
systemd-run might require higher privileges than machinectl
shell.
enable NAME..., disable NAME...
Enable or disable a container as a system service to start at
system boot, using systemd-nspawn(1). This enables or
disables systemd-nspawn@.service, instantiated for the
specified machine name, similar to the effect of systemctl
enable or systemctl disable on the service name.
poweroff NAME...
Power off one or more containers. This will trigger a reboot
by sending SIGRTMIN+4 to the container's init process, which
causes systemd-compatible init systems to shut down cleanly.
Use stop as alias for poweroff. This operation does not work
on containers that do not run a systemd(1)-compatible init
system, such as sysvinit. Use terminate (see below) to
immediately terminate a container or VM, without cleanly
shutting it down.
reboot NAME...
Reboot one or more containers. This will trigger a reboot by
sending SIGINT to the container's init process, which is
roughly equivalent to pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del on a
non-containerized system, and is compatible with containers
running any system manager.
terminate NAME...
Immediately terminates a virtual machine or container,
without cleanly shutting it down. This kills all processes of
the virtual machine or container and deallocates all
resources attached to that instance. Use poweroff to issue a
clean shutdown request.
kill NAME...
Send a signal to one or more processes of the virtual machine
or container. This means processes as seen by the host, not
the processes inside the virtual machine or container. Use
--kill-who= to select which process to kill. Use --signal= to
select the signal to send.
bind NAME PATH [PATH]
Bind mounts a file or directory from the host into the
specified container. The first path argument is the source
file or directory on the host, the second path argument is
the destination file or directory in the container. When the
latter is omitted, the destination path in the container is
the same as the source path on the host. When combined with
the --read-only switch, a ready-only bind mount is created.
When combined with the --mkdir switch, the destination path
is first created before the mount is applied. Note that this
option is currently only supported for systemd-nspawn(1)
containers, and only if user namespacing (--private-users) is
not used. This command supports bind mounting directories,
regular files, device nodes, AF_UNIX socket nodes, as well as
FIFOs.
copy-to NAME PATH [PATH]
Copies files or directories from the host system into a
running container. Takes a container name, followed by the
source path on the host and the destination path in the
container. If the destination path is omitted, the same as
the source path is used.
If host and container share the same user and group
namespace, file ownership by numeric user ID and group ID is
preserved for the copy, otherwise all files and directories
in the copy will be owned by the root user and group (UID/GID
0).
copy-from NAME PATH [PATH]
Copies files or directories from a container into the host
system. Takes a container name, followed by the source path
in the container and the destination path on the host. If the
destination path is omitted, the same as the source path is
used.
If host and container share the same user and group
namespace, file ownership by numeric user ID and group ID is
preserved for the copy, otherwise all files and directories
in the copy will be owned by the root user and group (UID/GID
0).
Image Commands
list-images
Show a list of locally installed container and VM images.
This enumerates all raw disk images and container directories
and subvolumes in /var/lib/machines/ (and other search paths,
see below). Use start (see above) to run a container off one
of the listed images. Note that, by default, containers whose
name begins with a dot (".") are not shown. To show these
too, specify --all. Note that a special image ".host" always
implicitly exists and refers to the image the host itself is
booted from.
image-status [NAME...]
Show terse status information about one or more container or
VM images. This function is intended to generate
human-readable output. Use show-image (see below) to generate
computer-parsable output instead.
show-image [NAME...]
Show properties of one or more registered virtual machine or
container images, or the manager itself. If no argument is
specified, properties of the manager will be shown. If a NAME
is specified, properties of this virtual machine or container
image are shown. By default, empty properties are suppressed.
Use --all to show those too. To select specific properties to
show, use --property=. This command is intended to be used
whenever computer-parsable output is required. Use
image-status if you are looking for formatted human-readable
output.
clone NAME NAME
Clones a container or VM image. The arguments specify the
name of the image to clone and the name of the newly cloned
image. Note that plain directory container images are cloned
into btrfs subvolume images with this command, if the
underlying file system supports this. Note that cloning a
container or VM image is optimized for file systems that
support copy-on-write, and might not be efficient on others,
due to file system limitations.
Note that this command leaves hostname, machine ID and all
other settings that could identify the instance unmodified.
The original image and the cloned copy will hence share these
credentials, and it might be necessary to manually change
them in the copy.
If combined with the --read-only switch a read-only cloned
image is created.
rename NAME NAME
Renames a container or VM image. The arguments specify the
name of the image to rename and the new name of the image.
read-only NAME [BOOL]
Marks or (unmarks) a container or VM image read-only. Takes a
VM or container image name, followed by a boolean as
arguments. If the boolean is omitted, positive is implied,
i.e. the image is marked read-only.
remove NAME...
Removes one or more container or VM images. The special image
".host", which refers to the host's own directory tree, may
not be removed.
set-limit [NAME] BYTES
Sets the maximum size in bytes that a specific container or
VM image, or all images, may grow up to on disk (disk quota).
Takes either one or two parameters. The first, optional
parameter refers to a container or VM image name. If
specified, the size limit of the specified image is changed.
If omitted, the overall size limit of the sum of all images
stored locally is changed. The final argument specifies the
size limit in bytes, possibly suffixed by the usual K, M, G,
T units. If the size limit shall be disabled, specify "-" as
size.
Note that per-container size limits are only supported on
btrfs file systems.
clean
Remove hidden VM or container images (or all). This command
removes all hidden machine images from /var/lib/machines/,
i.e. those whose name begins with a dot. Use machinectl
list-images --all to see a list of all machine images,
including the hidden ones.
When combined with the --all switch removes all images, not
just hidden ones. This command effectively empties
/var/lib/machines/.
Note that commands such as machinectl pull-tar or machinectl
pull-raw usually create hidden, read-only, unmodified machine
images from the downloaded image first, before cloning a
writable working copy of it, in order to avoid duplicate
downloads in case of images that are reused multiple times.
Use machinectl clean to remove old, hidden images created
this way.
Image Transfer Commands
pull-tar URL [NAME]
Downloads a .tar container image from the specified URL, and
makes it available under the specified local machine name.
The URL must be of type "http://" or "https://", and must
refer to a .tar, .tar.gz, .tar.xz or .tar.bz2 archive file.
If the local machine name is omitted, it is automatically
derived from the last component of the URL, with its suffix
removed.
The image is verified before it is made available, unless
--verify=no is specified. Verification is done either via an
inline signed file with the name of the image and the suffix
.sha256 or via separate SHA256SUMS and SHA256SUMS.gpg files.
The signature files need to be made available on the same web
server, under the same URL as the .tar file. With
--verify=checksum, only the SHA256 checksum for the file is
verified, based on the .sha256 suffixed file or the
SHA256SUMS file. With --verify=signature, the sha checksum
file is first verified with the inline signature in the
.sha256 file or the detached GPG signature file
SHA256SUMS.gpg. The public key for this verification step
needs to be available in /usr/lib/systemd/import-pubring.gpg
or /etc/systemd/import-pubring.gpg.
The container image will be downloaded and stored in a
read-only subvolume in /var/lib/machines/ that is named after
the specified URL and its HTTP etag. A writable snapshot is
then taken from this subvolume, and named after the specified
local name. This behavior ensures that creating multiple
container instances of the same URL is efficient, as multiple
downloads are not necessary. In order to create only the
read-only image, and avoid creating its writable snapshot,
specify "-" as local machine name.
Note that the read-only subvolume is prefixed with .tar-, and
is thus not shown by list-images, unless --all is passed.
Note that pressing C-c during execution of this command will
not abort the download. Use cancel-transfer, described below.
pull-raw URL [NAME]
Downloads a .raw container or VM disk image from the
specified URL, and makes it available under the specified
local machine name. The URL must be of type "http://" or
"https://". The container image must either be a .qcow2 or
raw disk image, optionally compressed as .gz, .xz, or .bz2.
If the local machine name is omitted, it is automatically
derived from the last component of the URL, with its suffix
removed.
Image verification is identical for raw and tar images (see
above).
If the downloaded image is in .qcow2 format it is converted
into a raw image file before it is made available.
Downloaded images of this type will be placed as read-only
.raw file in /var/lib/machines/. A local, writable
(reflinked) copy is then made under the specified local
machine name. To omit creation of the local, writable copy
pass "-" as local machine name.
Similar to the behavior of pull-tar, the read-only image is
prefixed with .raw-, and thus not shown by list-images,
unless --all is passed.
Note that pressing C-c during execution of this command will
not abort the download. Use cancel-transfer, described below.
import-tar FILE [NAME], import-raw FILE [NAME]
Imports a TAR or RAW container or VM image, and places it
under the specified name in /var/lib/machines/. When
import-tar is used, the file specified as the first argument
should be a tar archive, possibly compressed with xz, gzip or
bzip2. It will then be unpacked into its own subvolume in
/var/lib/machines/. When import-raw is used, the file should
be a qcow2 or raw disk image, possibly compressed with xz,
gzip or bzip2. If the second argument (the resulting image
name) is not specified, it is automatically derived from the
file name. If the filename is passed as "-", the image is
read from standard input, in which case the second argument
is mandatory.
Optionally, the --read-only switch may be used to create a
read-only container or VM image. No cryptographic validation
is done when importing the images.
Much like image downloads, ongoing imports may be listed with
list-transfers and aborted with cancel-transfer.
import-fs DIRECTORY [NAME]
Imports a container image stored in a local directory into
/var/lib/machines/, operates similar to import-tar or
import-raw, but the first argument is the source directory.
If supported, this command will create btrfs snapshot or
subvolume for the new image.
export-tar NAME [FILE], export-raw NAME [FILE]
Exports a TAR or RAW container or VM image and stores it in
the specified file. The first parameter should be a VM or
container image name. The second parameter should be a file
path the TAR or RAW image is written to. If the path ends in
".gz", the file is compressed with gzip, if it ends in ".xz",
with xz, and if it ends in ".bz2", with bzip2. If the path
ends in neither, the file is left uncompressed. If the second
argument is missing, the image is written to standard output.
The compression may also be explicitly selected with the
--format= switch. This is in particular useful if the second
parameter is left unspecified.
Much like image downloads and imports, ongoing exports may be
listed with list-transfers and aborted with cancel-transfer.
Note that, currently, only directory and subvolume images may
be exported as TAR images, and only raw disk images as RAW
images.
list-transfers
Shows a list of container or VM image downloads, imports and
exports that are currently in progress.
cancel-transfer ID...
Aborts a download, import or export of the container or VM
image with the specified ID. To list ongoing transfers and
their IDs, use list-transfers.
