14.5.4. Editing and Displaying a Description and Title of a Domain

The following command is used to show or modify the description and title of a domain, but does not configure it:

# virsh desc [domain-name] [[--live] [--config] | [--current]] [--title] [--edit] [--new-desc New description or title message]

These values are user fields that allow storage of arbitrary textual data to allow easy identification of domains. Ideally, the title should be short, although this is not enforced by libvirt.

The options --live or --config select whether this command works on live or persistent definitions of the domain. If both --live and --config are specified, the --config option will be implemented first, where the description entered in the command becomes the new configuration setting which is applied to both the live configuration and persistent configuration setting. The --current option will modify or get the current state configuration and will not be persistent. The --current option will be used if neither --live nor --config, nor --current are specified. The --edit option specifies that an editor with the contents of current description or title should be opened and the contents saved back afterwards. Using the --title option will show or modify the domain's title field only and not include its description. In addition, if neither --edit nor --new-desc are used in the command, then only the description is displayed and cannot be modified.

For example, the following command changes the guest virtual machine's title from testvm to TestVM-4F and will change the description to Guest VM on fourth floor:

$ virsh desc testvm --current --title TestVM-4F --new-desc Guest VM on fourth floor