Interactive Mode

Interactive Mode

REPL for exploring a disk without relaunching NBD/loop for every command. Aliases: guestkit interactive · guestkit repl · related guestkit shell.

Deep docs: interactive-mode.md.

Why

# Slow: each CLI call mounts again
guestkit list disk.qcow2 /etc
guestkit cat disk.qcow2 /etc/hostname

# Fast: one session
guestkit interactive disk.qcow2
guestkit> ls /etc
guestkit> cat /etc/hostname

Launch

guestkit interactive disk.qcow2
guestkit repl disk.qcow2
# Often needs sudo/root for NBD/loop

Startup inspects the image once (OS / distro / version in the banner). Type help or ?.

REPL command map

Area	Commands
System	info
Filesystems	filesystems/fs, mount, umount/unmount, mounts
Files	ls, cat, head, find, stat, download, explore/ex
Inspect	packages/pkg, services/svc, users, network/net
Session	clear/cls, help/?, exit/quit/q

guestkit> info
guestkit> ls /etc
guestkit> cat /etc/hostname
guestkit> packages nginx
guestkit> services
guestkit> network
guestkit> explore /var/log
guestkit> exit

Keys

Key	Action
↑ / ↓	Command history
Ctrl+C	Cancel line (stay in REPL)
Ctrl+D	Exit

When to use what

Tool	Best for
Interactive / shell	Many file reads on one image
Explore	Visual browse + preview
TUI	Assurance, packages, issues dashboard
One-shot CLI	Scripts / CI (-o json) — CLI Commands