openstack-manuals/doc/image-guide/source/virt-install.rst

Use virt-install and connect by using a local VNC client

If you do not wish to use virt-manager (for example, you do not want to install the dependencies on your server, you don't have an X server running locally, the X11 forwarding over SSH isn't working), you can use the virt-install tool to boot the virtual machine through libvirt and connect to the graphical console from a VNC client installed on your local machine.

Because VNC is a standard protocol, there are multiple clients available that implement the VNC spec, including TigerVNC <http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/tigervnc/ index.php?title=Welcome_to_TigerVNC> (multiple platforms), TightVNC (multiple platforms), RealVNC (multiple platforms), Chicken (Mac OS X), Krde (KDE), Vinagre (GNOME).

The following example shows how to use the qemu-img command to create an empty image file, and virt-install command to start up a virtual machine using that image file. As root:

# qemu-img create -f qcow2 /data/centos-6.4.qcow2 10G
# virt-install --virt-type kvm --name centos-6.4 --ram 1024 \
--cdrom=/data/CentOS-6.4-x86_64-netinstall.iso \
--disk path=/data/centos-6.4.qcow2,size=10,format=qcow2 \
--network network=default \
--graphics vnc,listen=0.0.0.0 --noautoconsole \
--os-type=linux --os-variant=rhel6

Starting install...
Creating domain...                     |    0 B     00:00
Domain installation still in progress. You can reconnect to
the console to complete the installation process.

The KVM hypervisor starts the virtual machine with the libvirt name, centos-6.4, with 1024 MB of RAM. The virtual machine also has a virtual CD-ROM drive associated with the /data/CentOS-6.4-x86_64-netinstall.iso file and a local 10 GB hard disk in qcow2 format that is stored in the host at /data/centos-6.4.qcow2. It configures networking to use libvirt default network. There is a VNC server that is listening on all interfaces, and libvirt will not attempt to launch a VNC client automatically nor try to display the text console (--no-autoconsole). Finally, libvirt will attempt to optimize the configuration for a Linux guest running a RHEL 6.x distribution.

Note

When using the libvirt default network, libvirt will connect the virtual machine's interface to a bridge called virbr0. There is a dnsmasq process managed by libvirt that will hand out an IP address on the 192.168.122.0/24 subnet, and libvirt has iptables rules for doing NAT for IP addresses on this subnet.

Run the virt-install --os-variant list command to see a range of allowed --os-variant options.

Use the virsh vncdisplay vm-name command to get the VNC port number.

# virsh vncdisplay centos-6.4
:1

In the example above, the guest centos-6.4 uses VNC display :1, which corresponds to TCP port 5901. You should be able to connect a VNC client running on your local machine to display :1 on the remote machine and step through the installation process.