Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
89 lines (61 loc) · 2.13 KB

virt-manager.md

File metadata and controls

89 lines (61 loc) · 2.13 KB
Raw

Technology How-To

Virtualization

Virtual Machine Manager

The virt-manager application is a desktop user interface for managing virtual machines through libvirt [1].

You can use UI applications to do the following steps, but it wouldn't be funny. So, let's go in the most interestingly.

Installing virt-manager

To install it on Ubuntu is easy.

sudo apt-get install virt-manager

Creating guest VM

You can set some resources when you are creating virtual machines on virt-manager, for example:

  • Name of the guest instance
  • Number of vcpus
  • Guest memory allocation
  • Disk size
  • Installation media

Although you have a UI to use, there is a way to provision operating systems from an ISO using a command-line tool.

sudo virt-install --name vm1 --vcpus 2 --memory 2048 \
  --disk size=25 \
  --cdrom /home/server/iso/some-os.iso
Creating a VM with other options
sudo virt-install --name vm1 --vcpus 2 --memory 2048 \
  --disk path=/media/server/vms/vm1.raw,format=raw,size=25 \
  --cdrom /home/server/iso/some-os.iso

Interacting with virtualized OS

There is a lightweight user interface for interacting with the virtualized guest OS: virt-viewer.

But, first, you need to start the virtual machine, but I didn't find a way to do this using virt-manager. Then, we will use virsh to that.

sudo virsh start vm1
virt-viewer vm1

SSH into a guest VM

It too easy: find the virtual machine IP and SSH it.

sudo virsh domifaddr vm1
ssh user@<vm1-ip-address>

The VM system may not have SSH installed by default. Then, you need to install it first. On Ubuntu, you can do it quickly. If your system has an enabled firewall, make sure to open the SSH port.

sudo apt-get install openssh-server
sudo ufw allow ssh

Cloning VM

You must pause or shut off the virtual machine to clone it. So, you can use a command-line tool: virt-clone.

sudo virsh shutdown vm1
sudo virt-clone --original vm1 --name vm2 --auto-clone

References

[1] virt-manager website