[CentOS] Install CentOS as KVM guest

Mon Apr 25 21:47:25 UTC 2011
Emmanuel Noobadmin <centos.admin at gmail.com>

I'm having problems trying to install CentOS as a KVM guest despite
following the wikis and howtos.

The problem is that most of the instructions skip the part that
happens after virt-install... It seems that something blindingly
obvious happens if nothing goes wrong and most instructions continues
from the OS installation screen.

However, when I try this, I get a blank console that says "Escape Char
is ^]" and doesn't do anything useful.

If I specify --vnc options, the blank console doesn't appear but the
CentOS guest doesn't respond to VNC connections. I've tried connecting
on the public IP, on the LAN IP, on loopback 127.0.0.1, with autoport,
with different specified ports, port numbers - 5900 since vnc seems to
accept :1 as 5901, enabling qemu to listen on all public interfaces
and allowing exceptions in iptables just in case loopback 127.0.0.1 is
blocked. But nothing gives me a console/screen that I can install the
OS.

Or should I expect VNC to work, given that the OS isn't installed, or
is it an inbuilt function of KVM?

The VM guest appears to be loaded, there are no obvious errors, virsh
list shows the VM but I can't do anything with them. It's been really
frustrating.

Can anybody please point out what's the obvious step or magic trick I'm missing?