The virsh dump command

The virsh dump command is a part of the libvirt package on the KVM host and does not need to be installed separately.

You can use virsh dump to create dumps of both running or crashed KVM guests. By default, virsh dump pauses a running guest during the dump process, but the guest continues running when the dump is complete. You can change this behavior through command parameters.

Always specify the --memory-only option to obtain a dump in valid elf format as required by the crash tool.

For information about more options for virsh dump, see the virsh man page at https://libvirt.org/manpages/virsh.html#dump. See also the virsh dump information in KVM Virtual Server Management, SC34-2752.