how could "virsh snapshot-list" with description

Question

virsh snapshot-create-as win7 snap01 --description "something here"

How could I list snapshots list with the description ?

Answer 1

This worked to a quick view

virsh snapshot-dumpxml --domain {domain name} --snapshotname {snapshot name} | grep 'description'

Answer 2

I managed to do a simple bash script to list all VMs and the snapshots description:

#!/bin/bash

vmdomains=`sudo virsh list --all | sed 1,2d | awk '{ print $2 }'`

echo -ne "Domain\t\t\tSnapshot Name\t\t\tDescription\n"
echo "-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"
for vmdomain in $vmdomains; do
  echo -ne "$vmdomain\t\t"
  snapshots=`sudo virsh snapshot-list $vmdomain | sed 1,2d | awk '{ print $1 }'`
  snapshotflag=0
  for snapshot in $snapshots; do
    snapshotflag=1
    echo -ne "$snapshot\t\t"
    sudo virsh snapshot-dumpxml --domain $vmdomain --snapshotname $snapshot | grep "<description>" | sed 's/  <description>//' | sed 's/<\/description>//'
  done
  if [ $snapshotflag -eq 0 ]; then
    echo
  fi
done

Edit: Output example

~$ sh listsnap.sh 
Domain               Snapshot Name                  Description
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Win10                Win10_Disabled_Updates         Used gpedit to disable updates
Win10                Win10_games_installed          Gaming Rig with passtrhough gpu
CentOS               CentOS_origin                  Installed Nginx and web dependencies
CentOS               CentOS_Wednesday               Installed Anaconda and Julia
CentOS               CentOS_weekend                 Updated PIP dependencies
Fedora
Ubuntu               Testing_nfs_Ubuntu             Configured nfs server

Edit: This was a quick script and may not handle all cases in the best way, see other scripts posted here for more detailed workaround. Also RHEL web console already shows snapshot descriptions Yay!

Answer 3

I tried Holger Jakobs' solution but it required packages not on my Linux system.

Then I tried Faustino Aguilar's solution and it almost works. However, it is legal to embed spaces in the snapshot name and his script doesn't handle that case. I also had serious formatting problems for snapshots that didn't include a description.

So, I made significant modifications and believe I have a working script with the caveat that a domain name or a snapshot name over 20 characters won't work as desired without modifying the script.

#!/bin/bash
# 
# Prints snapshots with descriptions for virsh.
#
# Caveats
# This script has undefined behavior if snapshot name > 20 characters.
# (If that is a problem, consider changing "formatPre" and "cut -c2-21" below.)

vmdomains=`virsh list --all | sed 1,2d | awk '{ print $2 }'`
formatPre="%-21s%-21s"
format="$formatPre %s\n"

printf "$format" "Domain" "Snapshot Name" "Description"
printf "$format" "--------------------" "---------------------" "--------------------------------------"

SAVE_IFS="$IFS"
IFS=$(echo -en "\n\b")
for vmdomain in $vmdomains; do
  snapshots=`virsh snapshot-list $vmdomain | sed 1,2d | cut -c2-21 | sed 's/ *$//'`
  for snapshot in $snapshots; do
    printf "$formatPre " "$vmdomain" "${snapshot}"
    description=`virsh snapshot-dumpxml --domain "$vmdomain" --snapshotname "${snapshot}" | grep "<description>" | sed 's/  <description>//' | sed 's/<\/description>//'`
    echo "$description"
  done
done

IFS="$SAVE_IFS"

Sample output. (Not all my snapshots have descriptions.)

Domain               Snapshot Name         Description
-------------------- --------------------- --------------------------------------
ps111                0-init
ps111                1-setup
ps111                2-named
ps111                3-python
ps111                4-tmp
skit20               00initial             initial
skit20               01setup               apt update/upgrade + vim + ssh
skit20-clone         00initial             initial
train20              01 Initial
train20              02 LinuxBase
watchdog20           00initial             initial

Answer 4

You can produce a list of all machines with information about their snapshots including the description with this little script.

  #!/bin/sh
  #\
  exec sudo tclsh "$0" "$@"
  
  # List KVM snapshots of all machines (domains) including their description
  # Holger@Jakobs.com 2020-08-21
  
  package require tdom
  
  ### Acquire list of machines (domains) from "virsh list --all"
  set machines ""
  foreach machineInfo [lrange [split [exec virsh list --all] \n] 2 end-1] {
    set name [string trim [string range $machineInfo 7 37]]
    set state [string trim [string range $machineInfo 38 end]]
    dict set machines $name state $state
  } ;# foreach
  
  
  ### Acquire list of snapshots for all machines (name, time and description)
  foreach m [dict keys $machines] {
    foreach snapshot [lrange [split [exec virsh snapshot-list --domain $m] \n] 2 end-1] {
      set name [string trim [string range $snapshot 1 21]]
      set xmlRoot [[dom parse [exec virsh snapshot-dumpxml --domain $m --snapshotname $name]] documentElement]
      set descr [[$xmlRoot selectNodes /domainsnapshot/description/text()] data]
      set creaTime [clock format [[$xmlRoot selectNodes /domainsnapshot/creationTime/text()] data] -format {%Y-%m-%d %H:%M}]
      dict set machines $m snapshots $name time $creaTime
      dict set machines $m snapshots $name descr $descr
    } ;# foreach snapshot
  } ;# foreach machine
  
  
  ### Output a list of all machines with their snapshots including time and description
  foreach m [dict keys $machines] {
    puts [format "\nMACHINE '%s' (%s)" $m [dict get $machines $m state]]
    catch {unset snapshots}
    dict with machines $m {
      if [info exists snapshots] {
        foreach sn [dict keys $snapshots] {
          puts "  SNAPSHOT '$sn', created: [dict get $snapshots $sn time]"
          foreach line [split [dict get $snapshots $sn descr] \n] {
            puts "    $line"
          }
        } ;# foreach snapshot
      } ;# if snapshot exists
    } ;# dict with
  } ;# foreach machine 
  
  puts ""

Answer 5

You can get the description from the snapshot xml dump:

virsh snapshot-dumpxml --domain {domain name} --snapshotname {snapshot name}