2010/11/13 MargoAndTodd margoandtodd@gmail.com:
On 11/11/2010 01:50 PM, Kenni Lund wrote:
You'll never need to run it from the command line, use the available management tools (libvirt+virsh from the command line, libvirt+virt-manager from X11), it makes your life much much easier. I've been running qemu-kvm from the command line for several years, and while it's fine to know how the system works, then you definitely don't want to manage your enterprise virtual machines that way. For example, if you start qemu-kvm twice in parallel, with the same HDD image, you'll damage or destroy your HDD image. Libvirt takes care of such banalities and many others.
Thank you!
These are small business servers. The CentOS server is the only server on the network. I start my VM's in rc.local and shut them down in rd.shutdown (I wrote my own). So, I am stuck with the command line. Thank you for the heads up on running them twice!
But, on my new office machine, I will be running them headed, so I will be using your instructions there.
Running from the command line doesn't mean you can't use the management tools:
Quick'n'dirty overview:
Install new guests: virt-install
Start guest: virsh start $guestname
List running guests: virsh list virsh list --all
Shutdown guest (sends an ACPI signal to the guest, telling it to shutdown correctly - same a clicking on the power button for 1 sec on most computers): virsh shutdown $guestname
Shutdown guest immediately (like pulling the power cable from a computer): virsh destroy $guestname
Edit a guest: virsh edit $guestname
etc. etc...run virsh --help and virt-install --help for more options.
Best regards Kenni