virt-rescue

Virt-rescue is a new tool proposed for inclusion in libguestfs. It lets you get a rescue shell on your virtual machine, good for making quick, interactive, unstructured fixes:

$ virt-rescue F11x64

Welcome to virt-rescue, the libguestfs rescue shell.

Note: The contents of / are the rescue appliance.
You have to mount the guest's partitions under /sysroot
before you will be able to examine them.

><rescue> /sbin/e2fsck /dev/vg_f11x64/lv_root
[...]
><rescue> mount /dev/vg_f11x64/lv_root /sysroot
><rescue> ls /sysroot/
bin   dev  home  lib64       media  opt   root  selinux  sys  usr
boot  etc  lib   lost+found  mnt    proc  sbin  srv      tmp  var
><rescue> sync
><rescue> umount /sysroot
><rescue> exit

Of course we encourage you to continue using libguestfs and guestfish for making properly structured changes through a stable, programmable API!