<p>
You can use squashfs to import large amounts of data
into a guest.  First you prepare the squashfs image:
</p>

<pre>
/sbin/mksquashfs data <i>[...]</i> data.sqsh
</pre>

<p>
and then you can add it to the guest as an extra data
drive.  In the example below, we show how to make a
squashfs from the contents of some local directory
(<code>/usr/share/man/man8</code> in this example)
and then make that appear in the guest.
</p>

<p>
See also <a href="http://libguestfs.org/virt-tar.1.html">virt-tar</a>
and <a href="https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/tip-uploading-and-downloading/#content">Richard
Jones's complete list of ways to upload and download files</a>.
</p>