can i create a guest with libvirt and use an existing disc with freebsd?
Mattias,
----- Original Message -----
can i create a guest with libvirt and use an existing disc with freebsd?
libvirt is a library. Programs are written to use the functions it provides.
libvirtd is a service that does things like provide a DHCP server to VMs that are using NAT.
virtsh is a command line tool to manage virtual machines. It uses libvirt.
virt-manager is a GUI tool to manage virtual machines. It uses libvirt.
There are a number of other tools that are named virt-{whatever}. One of those is virt-install.
The most direct, but perhaps more complicated way to do everything is to simply run qemu-kvm from the command line and pass to it all of the arguments needed to create a virtual machine from which you can boot from install media. Installing an OS from installation media is a graphical thing. There is a virtual video card that shows the output of the booting media. You will need a GUI of some sort to do a raw install. Once you have created a virtual machine, you can use the existing VMs storage (disk image file, partition, etc) as a cookie cutter to make other VMs from in a less GUI way.
As others have said, you should probably install enough GUI stuff on your VM host machine so you can start with virt-manager. You don't have to run a complete desktop to use virt-manager. In fact you can ssh -X to your VM host from another machine that has X running and have virt-manager appear on your local display without running X11 on the VM host.
So the answer to the question you keep repeating... is yes... you can install FreeBSD from a disc... if you'll start figuring out the system, how it works, and the tools that are available to do what you want.
Having said that, I've not installed FreeBSD and I've not done an install from a physical CD/DVD. I've always done Linux or Windows from an .iso file... and I primarily use virt-manager. The non-GUI ways are mostly for advanced users.
TYL,
but i allredy have the freebsd disc image file on the server ----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott Dowdle" dowdle@montanalinux.org To: "Discussion about the virtualization on CentOS" centos-virt@centos.org Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2013 7:23 PM Subject: Re: [CentOS-virt] create a guest
Mattias,
----- Original Message -----
can i create a guest with libvirt and use an existing disc with freebsd?
libvirt is a library. Programs are written to use the functions it provides.
libvirtd is a service that does things like provide a DHCP server to VMs that are using NAT.
virtsh is a command line tool to manage virtual machines. It uses libvirt.
virt-manager is a GUI tool to manage virtual machines. It uses libvirt.
There are a number of other tools that are named virt-{whatever}. One of those is virt-install.
The most direct, but perhaps more complicated way to do everything is to simply run qemu-kvm from the command line and pass to it all of the arguments needed to create a virtual machine from which you can boot from install media. Installing an OS from installation media is a graphical thing. There is a virtual video card that shows the output of the booting media. You will need a GUI of some sort to do a raw install. Once you have created a virtual machine, you can use the existing VMs storage (disk image file, partition, etc) as a cookie cutter to make other VMs from in a less GUI way.
As others have said, you should probably install enough GUI stuff on your VM host machine so you can start with virt-manager. You don't have to run a complete desktop to use virt-manager. In fact you can ssh -X to your VM host from another machine that has X running and have virt-manager appear on your local display without running X11 on the VM host.
So the answer to the question you keep repeating... is yes... you can install FreeBSD from a disc... if you'll start figuring out the system, how it works, and the tools that are available to do what you want.
Having said that, I've not installed FreeBSD and I've not done an install from a physical CD/DVD. I've always done Linux or Windows from an .iso file... and I primarily use virt-manager. The non-GUI ways are mostly for advanced users.
TYL,
Scott Dowdle 704 Church Street Belgrade, MT 59714 (406)388-0827 [home] (406)994-3931 [work] _______________________________________________ CentOS-virt mailing list CentOS-virt@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos-virt
On 01/16/2013 07:26 PM, mattias wrote:
but i allredy have the freebsd disc image file on the server
You may just create a logical volume, use dd(1) to transfer its contents onto the lv and use this.
Done that several times, works like a charm.
HTH,
Timo
PS: Please avoid top posting.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott Dowdle" dowdle@montanalinux.org To: "Discussion about the virtualization on CentOS" centos-virt@centos.org Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2013 7:23 PM Subject: Re: [CentOS-virt] create a guest
Mattias,
----- Original Message -----
can i create a guest with libvirt and use an existing disc with freebsd?
libvirt is a library. Programs are written to use the functions it provides.
libvirtd is a service that does things like provide a DHCP server to VMs that are using NAT.
virtsh is a command line tool to manage virtual machines. It uses libvirt.
virt-manager is a GUI tool to manage virtual machines. It uses libvirt.
There are a number of other tools that are named virt-{whatever}. One of those is virt-install.
The most direct, but perhaps more complicated way to do everything is to simply run qemu-kvm from the command line and pass to it all of the arguments needed to create a virtual machine from which you can boot from install media. Installing an OS from installation media is a graphical thing. There is a virtual video card that shows the output of the booting media. You will need a GUI of some sort to do a raw install. Once you have created a virtual machine, you can use the existing VMs storage (disk image file, partition, etc) as a cookie cutter to make other VMs from in a less GUI way.
As others have said, you should probably install enough GUI stuff on your VM host machine so you can start with virt-manager. You don't have to run a complete desktop to use virt-manager. In fact you can ssh -X to your VM host from another machine that has X running and have virt-manager appear on your local display without running X11 on the VM host.
So the answer to the question you keep repeating... is yes... you can install FreeBSD from a disc... if you'll start figuring out the system, how it works, and the tools that are available to do what you want.
Having said that, I've not installed FreeBSD and I've not done an install from a physical CD/DVD. I've always done Linux or Windows from an .iso file... and I primarily use virt-manager. The non-GUI ways are mostly for advanced users.
TYL,
Scott Dowdle 704 Church Street Belgrade, MT 59714 (406)388-0827 [home] (406)994-3931 [work]
Greetings,
----- Original Message -----
but i allredy have the freebsd disc image file on the server
DUH... I thought you were saying you had a disc or disc image of the FreeBSD install media. You already have a FreeBSD VM disk image? In that case, what is it from? Is it a KVM VM or did it come from some other virt platform like VMware, VirtualBox, Parallels, Xen or what?
You may run into an issue with drivers if it came from another virt platform that uses product specific tools (like VMware tools for example)... where to make it work correctly you have to remove their tools. This is probably less of an issue with a FreeBSD VM though.
There is also v2v which supposedly can convert a disk image of a VM from one product format to another. I haven't used it. There should be good documentation for v2v if you do a search.
TYL,
stacklet.com kvm image ----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott Dowdle" dowdle@montanalinux.org To: "Discussion about the virtualization on CentOS" centos-virt@centos.org Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2013 9:03 PM Subject: Re: [CentOS-virt] create a guest
Greetings,
----- Original Message -----
but i allredy have the freebsd disc image file on the server
DUH... I thought you were saying you had a disc or disc image of the FreeBSD install media. You already have a FreeBSD VM disk image? In that case, what is it from? Is it a KVM VM or did it come from some other virt platform like VMware, VirtualBox, Parallels, Xen or what?
You may run into an issue with drivers if it came from another virt platform that uses product specific tools (like VMware tools for example)... where to make it work correctly you have to remove their tools. This is probably less of an issue with a FreeBSD VM though.
There is also v2v which supposedly can convert a disk image of a VM from one product format to another. I haven't used it. There should be good documentation for v2v if you do a search.
TYL,
Scott Dowdle 704 Church Street Belgrade, MT 59714 (406)388-0827 [home] (406)994-3931 [work] _______________________________________________ CentOS-virt mailing list CentOS-virt@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos-virt
Greetings,
----- Original Message -----
stacklet.com kvm image
In that case, what I would do would be to create a new VM with virt-manager but use the disk image file provided. That will basically create /etc/libvirt/qemu/whatever.xml where whatever is the name you gave the VM in virt-manager. Then you can use virt-manager to start, stop, console connect etc... or you can use virsh from the command line.
BTW, if the VM is to have a public IP address then you want to setup a bridge device if you don't already have one, and associate the VM with that when you create it. If it is going to use a private IP address, then you can just use the default NAT.
KVM is a little complicated to get going with but the effort is definitely worth it.
And again, there is good documentation if you do a few searches.
TYL,
On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 3:28 PM, Scott Dowdle dowdle@montanalinux.org wrote:
Greetings,
----- Original Message -----
stacklet.com kvm image
In that case, what I would do would be to create a new VM with virt-manager but use the disk image file provided. That will basically create /etc/libvirt/qemu/whatever.xml where whatever is the name you gave the VM in virt-manager. Then you can use virt-manager to start, stop, console connect etc... or you can use virsh from the command line.
I just went through this migrating Ubuntu hosted virtual machine to CentOS and RHEL.
Be aware that the disk images can be stored in different formats, and not all KVM releases or other virtualization technologies can deal with all disk image formats. Most of them have some form of conversion tool, and unfortunately too many of them are prone to naming different formats with the same suffix. KVM is notoriosu for this., they're all *.imng" files unless manually told otherwise from the command line.
For example, if somone was using "QCOW" format on Ubuntu, and brings the disk image over to CentOS 6.3, that image needs to be converted with "qemu-img convert -f qcow2 srcfile.qcow targetfile.qcow2"
BTW, if the VM is to have a public IP address then you want to setup a bridge device if you don't already have one, and associate the VM with that when you create it. If it is going to use a private IP address, then you can just use the default NAT.
The documentation for this is, unfortunately, very poor and requires manual intervention if you have pair bonding or tagged VLAN's to deal with.
KVM is a little complicated to get going with but the effort is definitely worth it.
And again, there is good documentation if you do a few searches.
TYL,
Scott Dowdle 704 Church Street Belgrade, MT 59714 (406)388-0827 [home] (406)994-3931 [work] _______________________________________________ CentOS-virt mailing list CentOS-virt@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos-virt
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mattias -
Nico Kadel-Garcia -
Scott Dowdle -
Timo Schoeler