Virt-Manager Tutorial

General system Applications
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EDIT: This tutorial has been superseded by the newer, more detailed one, located here:

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Virt-Manager Tutorial

Installing virt-manager is very easy on EndeavourOS. Follow the installation instructions on the wiki page.

https://endeavouros.com/docs/applications/how-to-install-virtual-machine-manager/

Installation Steps

sudo pacman -S virt-manager libvirt qemu

For advanced settings with qemu you may want to install one or more of the extra packages found on the wiki page.

For UEFI support you need to install edk2-ovmf

sudo pacman -S edk2-ovmf

Make sure to start & enable the systemd service.

sudo systemctl enable --now libvirtd.service

It is probably a good idea to restart the computer before trying the virt-install.

Start Virtual Machine Manager and enter your password

Click on create new virtual machine

Your selection should be Local install media (ISO image Or CDRom)

Click forward

Click browse and then browse local

Select the folder where you have downloaded the ISO you want to use and click on the ISO to highlight it and it will populate the window

Uncheck (Automatically detect from the installation media/source)

Choose the operating system you are installing by typing in the box and selecting the appropriate OS (Arch)

Select ArchLinux (Or whatever operating system it is)

Click forward

Choose your memory and CPU settings

Click forward

Set your disk image size or leave default

Click forward

Name the OS you are installing

Click on the box customize configuration before install

Click on network selection and in the drop down box select your network which should give you source mode bridge.

Click finish and it should open to the configuration window

Here you can adjust settings if needed but it is important to set UEFI and click apply

Then click begin installation

If you have done everything correctly it should boot on the ISO

When the ISO has booted i usually set the display size

You can use xrandr to do this

xrandr --query

Then set a suitable resolution: (Example)

xrandr --output Virtual-1 --mode 1680x1050

This is assuming Virtual-1 is your connected monitor and 1680x1050 is a supported resolution.

Now you can start the installation process.

Please let me know if i have anything wrong here. Hope it works for you.

13 Likes
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is it coming virtualbox —> Virt-Manager ?

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Not that i am aware. Virtual-box for me isn’t working currently so i switched to virt-manager qemu. I’ll be honest i like virtual-box much better but if it isn’t working right it’s not useful so i wait until whatever the problem is gets resolved.

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Thanks for the tutorial. I’ve always found virt-manager to be quite cumbersome and not very easy to use.

I think your VBox problems will be fixed with 6.1.14. At least I hope so… :slight_smile:

1 Like
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:+1: Thank you for this excellent tutorial!

I’ve created a KDE Neon virtual machine. It does has better performance than the one on VirtualBox. I use Virtio for video and add the screen resolution (3200x1800_60.00) via cvt and xrandr. All work well. I’m not sure if “3D acceleration” is useful or not.

Now I need to figure out how to use Vagrant with Qemu/KVM.

1 Like
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What do you do with cvt?

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I have neverr used vagrant but i might look into that too. I found this which might be helpful.

Edit: This person is running EndeavourOS with vagarnt.

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cvt can generate Modeline for new screen resolution.

~ → cvt 3200 1800
# 3200x1800 59.96 Hz (CVT 5.76M9) hsync: 111.82 kHz; pclk: 492.00 MHz
Modeline "3200x1800_60.00"  492.00  3200 3456 3800 4400  1800 1803 1808 1865 -hsync +vsync
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What does this exactly do? You tell it the resolution?

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Then I can use the modeline with xrandr:

bob@kvm-neon:~$ xrandr --newmode "3200x1800_60.00"  492.00  3200 3456 3800 4400  1800 1803 1808 1865 -hsync +vsync
bob@kvm-neon:~$ xrandr --addmode Virtual-1 3200x1800_60.00
bob@kvm-neon:~$ xrandr --output Virtual-1 --mode 3200x1800_60.00
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I see so it’s like a modeline settings calculator? Gives you the output for a particular resolution?

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Yes. And you can make it permanent:

Create /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-monitor.conf

section "Monitor"
    Identifier "Virtual-1"
    Modeline "2560x1440_60.00"  312.25  2560 2752 3024 3488  1440 1443 1448 1493 -hsync +vsync
    Modeline "3200x1800_60.00"  492.00  3200 3456 3800 4400  1800 1803 1808 1865 -hsync +vsync
    Option "PreferredMode" "3200x1800_60.00"
EndSection
1 Like
13

if you can use
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=VirtIO-FS-FUSE-DAX-Linux-5.10
see benchmark

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The benchmark numbers are impressive! But it’s not in kernel yet. Will use 9p for now.