Linux Certif

Toute la documentation sur la certification Linux LPI

virt-install

NAME

virt-install - provision new virtual machines

SYNOPSIS

virt-install [OPTION]...

DESCRIPTION

virt-install is a command line tool for provisioning new virtual machines using the "libvirt" hypervisor management library. The tool supports both text based & graphical installations, using serial console, SDL graphics or a VNC client/server pair. The guest can be configured to use one or more virtual disks, network interfaces, audio devices, and physical host devices (USB, PCI).

The installation media can be held locally or remotely on NFS, HTTP, FTP servers. In the latter case "virt-install" will fetch the minimal files necessary to kick off the installation process, allowing the guest to fetch the rest of the OS distribution as needed. PXE booting, and importing an existing disk image (thus skipping the install phase) are also supported.

Given suitable command line arguments, "virt-install" is capable of running completely unattended, with the guest 'kickstarting' itself too. This allows for easy automation of guest installs. A companion tool "virt-clone(1)" is provided for cloning pre-existing guests.

OPTIONS

Most options are not required. Minimum requirements are --name, --ram, guest storage (--disk or --nodisks), and an install option.

-h, --help

Show the help message and exit

--connect=CONNECT

Connect to a non-default hypervisor. The default connection is chosen based on the following rules:

xen

If running on a host with the Xen kernel (checks against /proc/xen)

qemu:///system

If running on a bare metal kernel as root (needed for KVM installs)

qemu:///session

If running on a bare metal kernel as non-root

It is only necessary to provide the "--connect" argument if this default prioritization is incorrect, eg if wanting to use QEMU while on a Xen kernel.

General Options

General configuration parameters that apply to all types of guest installs.

-n NAME, --name=NAME

Name of the new guest virtual machine instance. This must be unique amongst all guests known to the hypervisor on the connection, including those not currently active. To re-define an existing guest, use the virsh(1) tool to shut it down ('virsh shutdown') & delete ('virsh undefine') it prior to running "virt-install".

-r MEMORY, --ram=MEMORY

Memory to allocate for guest instance in megabytes. If the hypervisor does not have enough free memory, it is usual for it to automatically take memory away from the host operating system to satisfy this allocation.

--arch=ARCH

Request a non-native CPU architecture for the guest virtual machine. The option is only currently available with QEMU guests, and will not enable use of acceleration. If omitted, the host CPU architecture will be used in the guest.

-u UUID, --uuid=UUID

UUID for the guest; if none is given a random UUID will be generated. If you specify UUID, you should use a 32-digit hexadecimal number. UUID are intended to be unique across the entire data center, and indeed world. Bear this in mind if manually specifying a UUID

--vcpus=VCPUS

Number of virtual cpus to configure for the guest. Not all hypervisors support SMP guests, in which case this argument will be silently ignored

--check-cpu

Check that the number virtual cpus requested does not exceed physical CPUs and warn if they do.

--cpuset=CPUSET

Set which physical cpus the guest can use. "CPUSET" is a comma separated list of numbers, which can also be specified in ranges. Example:

     0,2,3,5     : Use processors 0,2,3 and 5
     1-3,5,6-8   : Use processors 1,2,3,5,6,7 and 8
 
 

If the value 'auto' is passed, virt-install attempts to automatically determine an optimal cpu pinning using NUMA data, if available.

--os-type=OS_TYPE

Optimize the guest configuration for a type of operating system (ex. 'linux', 'windows'). This will attempt to pick the most suitable ACPI & APIC settings, optimally supported mouse drivers, virtio, and generally accommodate other operating system quirks. See "--os-variant" for valid options.

--os-variant=OS_VARIANT

Further optimize the guest configuration for a specific operating system variant (ex. 'fedora8', 'winxp'). This parameter is optional, and does not require an "--os-type" to be specified. Valid values are:

linux

debianetch

Debian Etch

debianlenny

Debian Lenny

fedora5

Fedora Core 5

fedora6

Fedora Core 6

fedora7

Fedora 7

fedora8

Fedora 8

fedora9

Fedora 9

fedora10

Fedora 10

fedora11

Fedora 11

generic24

Generic 2.4.x kernel

generic26

Generic 2.6.x kernel

virtio26

Generic 2.6.25 or later kernel with virtio

rhel2.1

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1

rhel3

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3

rhel4

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4

rhel5

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5

sles10

Suse Linux Enterprise Server

ubuntuhardy

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron)

ubuntuintrepid

Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex)

ubuntujaunty

Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope)

other

generic

Generic

msdos

MS-DOS

netware4

Novell Netware 4

netware5

Novell Netware 5

netware6

Novell Netware 6

solaris

opensolaris

Sun OpenSolaris

solaris10

Sun Solaris 10

solaris9

Sun Solaris 9

unix

freebsd6

Free BSD 6.x

freebsd7

Free BSD 7.x

openbsd4

Open BSD 4.x

windows

vista

Microsoft Windows Vista

win2k

Microsoft Windows 2000

win2k3

Microsoft Windows 2003

win2k8

Microsoft Windows 2008

winxp

Microsoft Windows XP (x86)

winxp64

Microsoft Windows XP (x86_64)

--host-device=HOSTDEV

Attach a physical host device to the guest. HOSTDEV is a node device name as used by libvirt (as shown by 'virsh nodedev-list').

Full Virtualization specific options

Parameters specific only to fully virtualized guest installs.

--sound

Attach a virtual audio device to the guest.

--noapic

Override the OS type / variant to disables the APIC setting for fully virtualized guest.

--noacpi

Override the OS type / variant to disables the ACPI setting for fully virtualized guest.

Virtualization Type options

Options to override the default virtualization type choices.

-v, --hvm

Request the use of full virtualization, if both para & full virtualization are available on the host. This parameter may not be available if connecting to a Xen hypervisor on a machine without hardware virtualization support. This parameter is implied if connecting to a QEMU based hypervisor.

-p, --paravirt

This guest should be a paravirtualized guest. If the host supports both para & full virtualization, and neither this parameter nor the "--hvm" are specified, this will be assumed.

--accelerate

When installing a QEMU guest, make use of the KVM or KQEMU kernel acceleration capabilities if available. Use of this option is recommended unless a guest OS is known to be incompatible with the accelerators. The KVM accelerator is preferred over KQEMU if both are available.

Installation Method options

-c CDROM, --cdrom=CDROM

File or device use as a virtual CD-ROM device for fully virtualized guests. It can be path to an ISO image, or to a CDROM device. It can also be a URL from which to fetch/access a minimal boot ISO image. The URLs take the same format as described for the "--location" argument. If a cdrom has been specified via the "--disk" option, and neither "--cdrom" nor any other install option is specified, the "--disk" cdrom is used as the install media.

-l LOCATION, --location=LOCATION

Installation source for guest virtual machine kernel+initrd pair. The "LOCATION" can take one of the following forms:

DIRECTORY

Path to a local directory containing an installable distribution image

nfs:host:/path or nfs://host/path

An NFS server location containing an installable distribution image

http://host/path

An HTTP server location containing an installable distribution image

ftp://host/path

An FTP server location containing an installable distribution image

Some distro specific url samples:

Fedora/Red Hat Based

http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/10/Fedora/i386/os/

Debian/Ubuntu

http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dists/etch/main/installer-amd64/

Suse

http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.0/repo/oss/

Mandriva

ftp://ftp.uwsg.indiana.edu/linux/mandrake/official/2009.0/i586/

--pxe

Use the PXE boot protocol to load the initial ramdisk and kernel for starting the guest installation process.

--import

Skip the OS installation process, and build a guest around an existing disk image. The device used for booting is the first device specified via "--disk" or "--file".

--livecd

Specify that the installation media is a live CD and thus the guest needs to be configured to boot off the CDROM device permanently. It may be desirable to also use the "--nodisks" flag in combination.

-x EXTRA, --extra-args=EXTRA

Additional kernel command line arguments to pass to the installer when performing a guest install from "--location".

Storage Configuration

--disk=DISKOPTS

Specifies media to use as storage for the guest, with various options. The general format of a disk string is

     --disk opt1=val1,opt2=val2,...
 
 

To specify media, one of the following options is required:

path

A path to some storage media to use, existing or not. Existing media can be a file or block device. If installing on a remote host, the existing media must be shared as a libvirt storage volume.

Specifying a non-existent path implies attempting to create the new storage, and will require specifyng a 'size' value. If the base directory of the path is a libvirt storage pool on the host, the new storage will be created as a libvirt storage volume. For remote hosts, the base directory is required to be a storage pool if using this method.

pool

An existing libvirt storage pool name to create new storage on. Requires specifying a 'size' value.

vol

An existing libvirt storage volume to use. This is specified as 'poolname/volname'.

Other available options:

device

Disk device type. Value can be 'cdrom', 'disk', or 'floppy'. Default is 'disk'. If a 'cdrom' is specified, and no install method is chosen, the cdrom is used as the install media.

bus

Disk bus type. Value can be 'ide', 'scsi', 'usb', 'virtio' or 'xen'. The default is hypervisor dependent since not all hypervisors support all bus types.

perms

Disk permissions. Value can be 'rw' (Read/Write), 'ro' (Readonly), or 'sh' (Shared Read/Write). Default is 'rw'

size

size (in GB) to use if creating new storage

sparse

whether to skip fully allocating newly created storage. Value is 'true' or 'false'. Default is 'true' (do not fully allocate).

The initial time taken to fully-allocate the guest virtual disk (spare=false) will be usually by balanced by faster install times inside the guest. Thus use of this option is recommended to ensure consistently high performance and to avoid I/O errors in the guest should the host filesystem fill up.

cache

The cache mode to be used. The host pagecache provides cache memory. The cache value can be 'none', 'writethrough', or 'writeback'. 'writethrough' provides read caching. 'writeback' provides read and write caching.

See the examples section for some uses. This option deprecates "--file", "--file-size", and "--nonsparse".

-f DISKFILE, --file=DISKFILE

Path to the file, disk partition, or logical volume to use as the backing store for the guest's virtual disk. This option is deprecated in favor of "--disk".

-s DISKSIZE, --file-size=DISKSIZE

Size of the file to create for the guest virtual disk. This is deprecated in favor of "--disk".

--nonsparse

Fully allocate the storage when creating. This is deprecated in favort of "--disk"

--nodisks

Request a virtual machine without any local disk storage, typically used for running 'Live CD' images or installing to network storage (iSCSI or NFS root).

Networking Configuration

-w NETWORK, --network=NETWORK

Connect the guest to the host network. The value for "NETWORK" can take one of 3 formats:

bridge:BRIDGE

Connect to a bridge device in the host called "BRIDGE". Use this option if the host has static networking config & the guest requires full outbound and inbound connectivity to/from the LAN. Also use this if live migration will be used with this guest.

network:NAME

Connect to a virtual network in the host called "NAME". Virtual networks can be listed, created, deleted using the "virsh" command line tool. In an unmodified install of "libvirt" there is usually a virtual network with a name of "default". Use a virtual network if the host has dynamic networking (eg NetworkManager), or using wireless. The guest will be NATed to the LAN by whichever connection is active.

user

Connect to the LAN using SLIRP. Only use this if running a QEMU guest as an unprivileged user. This provides a very limited form of NAT.

If this option is omitted a single NIC will be created in the guest. If there is a bridge device in the host with a physical interface enslaved, that will be used for connectivity. Failing that, the virtual network called "default" will be used. This option can be specified multiple times to setup more than one NIC.

-b BRIDGE, --bridge=BRIDGE

Bridge device to connect the guest NIC to. This parameter is deprecated in favour of the "--network" parameter.

-m MAC, --mac=MAC

Fixed MAC address for the guest; If this parameter is omitted, or the value "RANDOM" is specified a suitable address will be randomly generated. For Xen virtual machines it is required that the first 3 pairs in the MAC address be the sequence '00:16:3e', while for QEMU or KVM virtual machines it must be '54:52:00'.

--nonetworks

Request a virtual machine without any network interfaces.

Graphics Configuration

If no graphics option is specified, "virt-install" will default to --vnc if the DISPLAY environment variable is set, otherwise --nographics is used.

--vnc

Setup a virtual console in the guest and export it as a VNC server in the host. Unless the "--vncport" parameter is also provided, the VNC server will run on the first free port number at 5900 or above. The actual VNC display allocated can be obtained using the "vncdisplay" command to "virsh" (or virt-viewer(1) can be used which handles this detail for the use).

--vncport=VNCPORT

Request a permanent, statically assigned port number for the guest VNC console. Use of this option is discouraged as other guests may automatically choose to run on this port causing a clash.

--sdl

Setup a virtual console in the guest and display an SDL window in the host to render the output. If the SDL window is closed the guest may be unconditionally terminated.

--nographics

No graphical console will be allocated for the guest. Fully virtualized guests (Xen FV or QEmu/KVM) will need to have a text console configured on the first serial port in the guest (this can be done via the --extra-args option). Xen PV will set this up automatically. The command 'virsh console NAME' can be used to connect to the serial device.

--noautoconsole

Don't automatically try to connect to the guest console. The default behaviour is to launch a VNC client to display the graphical console, or to run the "virsh" "console" command to display the text console. Use of this parameter will disable this behaviour.

-k KEYMAP, --keymap=KEYMAP

Request that the virtual VNC console be configured to run with a non-English keyboard layout.

Miscellaneous Options

-d, --debug

Print debugging information to the terminal when running the install process. The debugging information is also stored in "$HOME/.virtinst/virt-install.log" even if this parameter is omitted.

--noreboot

Prevent the domain from automatically rebooting after the install has completed.

--wait=WAIT

Amount of time to wait (in minutes) for a VM to complete its install. Without this option, virt-install will wait for the console to close (not neccessarily indicating the guest has shutdown), or in the case of --noautoconsole, simply kick off the install and exit. Any negative value will make virt-install wait indefinitely, a value of 0 triggers the same results as noautoconsole. If the time limit is succeeded, virt-install simply exits, leaving the virtual machine in its current state.

--force

Prevent interactive prompts. If the intended prompt was a yes/no prompt, always say yes. For any other prompts, the application will exit.

--prompt

Specifically enable prompting. Default prompting is off (as of virtinst 0.400.0)

EXAMPLES

Install a KVM guest, creating a new storage file, virtual networking, booting from the host CDROM, using VNC server/viewer

   # virt-install \
        --connect qemu:///system \
        --name demo \
        --ram 500 \
        --disk path=/var/lib/libvirt/images/demo.img,size=5 \
        --network network:default \
        --accelerate \
        --vnc \
        --cdrom /dev/cdrom
 
 

Install a Fedora 9 KVM guest, using LVM partition, virtual networking, booting from PXE, using VNC server/viewer

   # virt-install \
        --connect qemu:///system \
        --name demo \
        --ram 500 \
        --disk path=/dev/HostVG/DemoVM \
        --network network:default \
        --accelerate \
        --vnc \
        --os-variant fedora9
 
 

Install a QEMU guest, with a real partition, for a different architecture using SDL graphics, using a remote kernel and initrd pair:

   # virt-install \
        --connect qemu:///system \
        --name demo \
        --ram 500 \
        --disk path=/dev/hdc \
        --network bridge:eth1 \
        --arch ppc64 \
        --sdl \
        --location http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/6/x86_64/os/
 
 

Run a Live CD image under Xen fullyvirt, in diskless environment

   # virt-install \
        --hvm \
        --name demo \
        --ram 500 \
        --nodisks \
        --livecd \
        --vnc \
        --cdrom /root/fedora7live.iso
 
 

Install a paravirtualized Xen guest, 500 MB of RAM, a 5 GB of disk, and Fedora Core 6 from a web server, in text-only mode, with old style --file options:

   # virt-install \
        --paravirt \
        --name demo \
        --ram 500 \
        --file /var/lib/xen/images/demo.img \
        --file-size 6 \
        --nographics \
        --location http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/6/x86_64/os/
 
 

Create a guest from an existing disk image 'mydisk.img' using defaults for the rest of the options.

   # virt-install \
        --name demo
        --ram 512
        --disk path=/home/user/VMs/mydisk.img
        --import
 
 

AUTHORS

Written by Daniel P. Berrange, Hugh Brock, Jeremy Katz, Cole Robinson and a team of many other contributors. See the AUTHORS file in the source distribution for the complete list of credits.

BUGS

Report bugs to the mailing list "http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/et-mgmt-tools" or directly to BugZilla "http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/" against the "Fedora" product, and the "python-virtinst" component.

When filing a bug, please run the failing command with the --debug command line flag and post the output to the bug report, along with $HOME/.virtinst/virt-install.log

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) 2006-2009 Red Hat, Inc, and various contributors. This is free software. You may redistribute copies of it under the terms of the GNU General Public License "http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html". There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

SEE ALSO

virsh(1), "virt-clone(1)", "virt-manager(1)", the project website "http://virt-manager.org"