openstack/openstack-manuals
Code Issues Proposed changes
9086a78059
openstack-manuals/doc/image-guide/source/virt-manager.rst
venkatamahesh e676eda7c2 [Image-guide] Fix the RST mark-ups 
In this patch I added the RST mark-ups and 'the' article
whereever needed

Change-Id: I9dd8f8bda5a22b6e50adc1f839dfa586f7c17b24
2015-12-10 19:05:41 +05:30

1.7 KiB
Raw Blame History

Use the virt-manager X11 GUI

If you plan to create a virtual machine image on a machine that can run X11 applications, the simplest way to do so is to use the virt-manager GUI, which is installable as the virt-manager package on both Fedora-based and Debian-based systems. This GUI has an embedded VNC client that will let you view and interact with the guest's graphical console.

If you are building the image on a headless server, and you have an X server on your local machine, you can launch virt-manager using ssh X11 forwarding to access the GUI. Since virt-manager interacts directly with libvirt, you typically need to be root to access it. If you can ssh directly in as root (or with a user that has permissions to interact with libvirt), do:

$ ssh -X root@server virt-manager

If the account you use to ssh into your server does not have permissions to run libvirt, but has sudo privileges, do:

$ ssh -X root@server
$ sudo virt-manager

Note

The -X flag passed to ssh will enable X11 forwarding over ssh. If this does not work, try replacing it with the -Y flag.

Click the New button at the top-left and step through the instructions.

You will be shown a series of dialog boxes that will allow you to specify information about the virtual machine.

Note

When using qcow2 format images you should check the option customize before install, go to disk properties and explicitly select the qcow2 format. This ensures the virtual machine disk size will be correct.