[libvirt] Using libvirt to obtain mac address of virtual domain

[Charles Duffy]

Daniel Berteaud wrote:
> If you need to get the mac address from bash, you can use this:
> 
> virsh dumpxml myguest | grep 'mac address' | cut -d\' -f2
> 
> You'll get one mac address per line (one line per NIC on the guest)

An alternate approach which doesn't depend on the specific manner in 
which the XML is pretty-printed follows:

virsh dumpxml myguest \
   | xmlstarlet sel -t \
       -m "/domain/devices/interface[@type='network']/mac" \
       -v '@address' \
       -n

This does add an external dependency (see http://xmlstar.sf.net/), but I 
find XMLStarlet useful in conjunction with libvirt in other cases -- for 
instance, for programatically adding or modifying devices within the 
domain XML.