vbkview

vbkview is a CLI to inspect and extract data from Veeam .vbk backup files.

It is built on top of vbktoolkit and supports both:

• interactive shell mode
• non-interactive commands (automation/CI-friendly)

Features

• Browse VBK internal filesystem and guest filesystem volumes (ls, tree, stat)
• Read file content (cat)
• Extract files (get)
• Find files by name (find)
• Search text in files (grep)
• List embedded virtual disk files (disks)
• Auto-detect guest partitions from embedded virtual disks (volumes, use)
• Interactive tab-completion for commands and paths in shell mode
• JSON output mode for automation (--json)
• Stable exit codes for common error categories

Installation

Install latest

go install github.com/GoToolSharing/vbkview@latest

Build locally

git clone https://github.com/GoToolSharing/vbkview
cd vbkview
go build -o vbkview .

Quick Start

# Run directly from source
go run . --help

# Or run the built binary
./vbkview --help

# Interactive shell
go run . shell --vbk /path/to/backup.vbk

# List root directory
go run . ls --vbk /path/to/backup.vbk /

Global Flags

• -f, --vbk path to .vbk file (required for data commands)
• --verify verify VBK metadata CRCs (default true)
• --cwd working directory inside VBK for relative paths
• --json JSON output (when supported)

Commands

• shell start interactive mode
• pwd print current directory
• ls [path] list directory content (-l for long format)
• cat <path> print file content (--limit, --base64)
• get <src> [dst] extract file (--resume, --sha256)
• find <name> [start] find files by name
• stat [path] show metadata (--props)
• tree [path] print directory tree (--depth)
• grep <pattern> [start] search text (-i, --max-bytes)
• disks list .vhd/.vhdx entries
• volumes list detected guest volumes (or fallback root volume)

Examples

Non-interactive usage

# List detected guest volumes
vbkview volumes --vbk /path/to/backup.vbk

# Long listing
vbkview ls -l --vbk /path/to/backup.vbk /some/dir

# Metadata as JSON
vbkview stat --vbk /path/to/backup.vbk --json /summary.xml

# Tree up to depth 2
vbkview tree --vbk /path/to/backup.vbk --depth 2 /

# Find files (JSON)
vbkview find --vbk /path/to/backup.vbk --json summary /

# Grep case-insensitive in first 1 MiB per file
vbkview grep --vbk /path/to/backup.vbk -i --max-bytes 1048576 "error|warning" /

Extraction workflows

# Simple extraction
vbkview get --vbk /path/to/backup.vbk /path/in/vbk/file.bin ./file.bin

# Resume extraction if output already exists
vbkview get --vbk /path/to/backup.vbk --resume /path/in/vbk/file.bin ./file.bin

# Extract + integrity verification
vbkview get --vbk /path/to/backup.vbk --sha256 <expected_sha256> /path/in/vbk/file.bin ./file.bin

# JSON extraction result
vbkview get --vbk /path/to/backup.vbk --json /path/in/vbk/file.bin ./file.bin

Interactive shell

vbk[/]> ls
vbk[/]> cd some/folder
vbk[/some/folder]> ll
vbk[/some/folder]> stat file.txt
vbk[/some/folder]> grep "password" /
vbk[/some/folder]> get file.txt ./file.txt
vbk[/some/folder]> quit

In interactive mode, press Tab to autocomplete:

• command names (ls, cat, get, ...)
• file and directory paths
• use volume indexes

Exit Codes

• 0 success
• 1 generic error
• 2 usage/argument error
• 3 path not found
• 4 not a directory
• 5 is a directory (when file expected)
• 6 unsupported data/feature
• 7 invalid VBK input/metadata

Development

go test ./...
go build .

If you work locally with vbktoolkit, use a replace directive in go.mod:

replace github.com/GoToolSharing/vbktoolkit => ../vbktoolkit