Virt-manager/QEMU guest

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This article covers Virt-manager and its QEMU creation of a guest (VM or container) (VM) for use under the soft-emulation mode QEMU hypervisor Type-2.

Virtual Machine Manager (virt-manager) and its configuration toward the creation of an strict-emulation-mode virtual machine that an QEMU-capable operating system to be installed on.

VM creation

To use the GUI approach, start the Virtual Machine Management application, virt-manager.

user $virt-manager

Note
To use the command line interface (CLI) approach only, follow this libvirt/QEMU guest wiki page.

Create a New VM

Hover the mouse over the button showing a console icon with shiny star tag (or use `File`->`New Virtual Machine` from menu bar:

How to Install

A new dialog appears that is titled "New VM" and highlighted "Create a new virtual machine" "Step 1 of 5".

Select the radio button to "Local install media".

To advance to the next step, press the "Forward" button.

Choose Image Media

"Choose ISO or CDROM image media" "Step 2 of 5" appears.

Hit the "Browse" button and find your downloaded image file: Gentoo, we hope, but any image media having this ISO 9660 CD-ROM filesystem data (DOS/MBR boot sector) will do.

Select the image file.

Click on the "Choose Volume" button.

Its file dialog box disappears and returns you back to the "New VM" GUI.

Make sure that checkbox is DISABLED to "Automatically detect from installation media / source".

In the textbox titled "Choose the operating system you are installing:", enter in `gentoo` and the popup combo box appears. Mouse-click on "Gentoo Linux (gentoo)"

Press "Forward" button.

Memory and CPUs

Selecting memory and CPU is basically rocket science. Pick them as you need them. Memory can be adjusted at next run; storage size, not as easily.

Memory

In Step 3 of 5, select the amount of memory that the operating system of new virtual machine desires.

Select the number of CPUs to make available to the new virtual machine.

Storage

In the "New VM" GUI, "Step 4 of 5" appears.

In the "Create a disk image for the virtual machine" textbox, increase it to the desired storage size, in gigabytes.

Press "Forward" button to continue to the next step.

Begin Install

Step 5 of 5 window appears.

Expand the "Network Selection".

Enable the checkbox to "Customize configuration before install".

Ensure that "Virtual Network 'default': NAT" is already selected as a minimum.

Press the "Finish" button.

Tweaking VM

At the menu bar, press "Begin installation" button.

Boot Up Result

After BIOS and Linux kernel bootup, you should get a virtual machine up and running.

See also

• Virtualization — the concept and technique that permits running software in an environment separate from a computer operating system.
• QEMU — a generic, open source hardware emulator and virtualization suite.
• QEMU/Front-ends — facilitate VM management and use

• Libvirt — a virtualization management toolkit.
• Libvirt/QEMU_networking — details the setup of Gentoo networking by Libvirt for use by guest containers and QEMU-based virtual machines.
• Libvirt/QEMU_guest — covers creation of a virtual machine using only libvirt via the virt-install command line utility.

• Virt-manager — desktop user interface for management of virtual machines and containers through the libvirt library

• QEMU/Linux guest — describes the setup of a Gentoo Linux guest in QEMU using Gentoo bootable media.