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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 with one or more virtual disks and network interfaces plumbed through to the host.

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.

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 if their installation cannot be easily automated from pristine media.

OPTIONS

Any of the options can be omitted, in which case "virt-install" will run interactively prompting for input as required.

-h, --help

Show the help message and exit

-n NAME, --name=NAME

Name of the new guest virtual machine instance. This must be unique amongst all guests known to the hypervisor on this machine, including those not currently active. To re-define an existing guest, use the virsh(1) tool to shut it down & delete it prior to running "virt-install". This parameter will be prompted for if omitted on the command line.

-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. This parameter will be prompted for if omitted on the command line.

-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.

-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. If the path does not exist, then "--file-size" option should also be specified, allowing the disk to be created. This parameter can be repeated multiple times to add many disk. This parameter will be prompted for if omitted on the command line.

-s DISKSIZE, --file-size=DISKSIZE

Size of the file to create for the guest virtual disk, if the path given to "--file" does not already exist. The size is to be specified in gigabytes, with fractional numbers allowed. The storage for the file will not be pre-allocated unless the "--nonsparse" option is also specified. This parameter will be prompted for if omitted on the command line & a new file is to be created.

--nonsparse

Request creation of a non-sparse file for the guest virtual disk. The initial time taken to fully-allocate the guest virtual disk will be usually by balanced by faster install times inside the guest. Thus use of this optional is recommended to ensure consistently high performance and to avoid I/O errors in the guest should the host filesystem fill up.

--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). This disables all interactive prompts for disk setup.

-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'.

-b BRIDGE, --bridge=BRIDGE

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

-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.

--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". If neither this, nor the "--sdl" or "--nographics" parameters are specified, this will be prompted for.

--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

Disable all interactive prompts for the guest virtual console. No graphical console will be allocated for the guest. A text based console will always be available on the first serial port (or equivalent paravirtualised console 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 console be configured to run with a non-English keyboard layout.

--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.

--connect=CONNECT Connect to hypervisor with URI

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

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.

--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.

-v, --hvm This guest should be a fully virtualized guest

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.

-c CDROM, --cdrom=CDROM

File to use 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 this parameter is omitted then the "--location" argument must be given to specify a location for the kernel and initrd, or the "--pxe" argument used to install from the network.

--pxe

Use the PXE boot protocol to load the initial ramdisk and kernel for starting the guest installation process. If this parameter is omitted then either the "--location" or "--cdrom" arguments must be given to specify a location for the kernel and initrd.

--os-type=OS_TYPE

Optimize the guest configuration for a type of operating system. This will attempt to pick the most suitable ACPI & APIC settings, optimally supported mouse drivers and generally accommodate other operating system quirks. The valid operating system types are

linux

Linux 2.x series

windows

Microsoft Windows 9x or later

unix

Traditional UNIX BSD or SysV derivatives

other

Operating systems not in one of the 3 prior groups

--os-variant=OS_VARIANT

Further optimize the guest configuration for a specific operating system variant. This parameter is optional. The valid variants are

linux

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

centos5

Cent OS 5

fedora5

Fedora Core 5

fedora6

Fedora Core 6

fedora7

Fedora 7

sles10

Suse Linux Enterprise Server 10.x

generic26

Generic Linux 2.6.x kernel

generic24

Generic Linux 2.4.x kernel

windows

winxp

Microsoft Windows XP

win2k

Microsoft Windows 2000

win2k3

Microsoft Windows 2003

vista

Microsoft Windows Vista

unix

solaris9

Sun Solaris 9

solaris10

Sun Solaris 10

freebsd6

Free BSD 6.x

openbsd4

Open BSD 4.x

other

msdos

Microsoft DOS

netware4

Novell Netware 4

netware5

Novell Netware 5

netware6

Novell Netware 6

--noapic

Override the OS type / variant to disables the APIC setting for fully virtualized guest. =item --noacpi

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

--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.

-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 prompted for interactively.

-l LOCATION, --location=LOCATION

Installation source for guest virtual machine kernel+initrd pair. This is required for paravirtualized guests. Fully virtualized guests must use either "--location" to specify a kernel+initrd, or the "--cdrom" parameter to specify an ISO/CDROM image. The "LOCATION" can take one of the following forms:

DIRECTORY

Path to a local directory containing an installable distribution image

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

-x EXTRA, --extra-args=EXTRA

Additional kernel command line arguments to pass to the installer when performing a guest install from a kernel+initrd.

-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.

EXAMPLES

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:

   # 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/
 
 

Install a QEMU guest, with a real partition, for a different architecture using SDL graphics, using a local ISO image:

   # virt-install \
        --connect qemu:///system \
        --name demo \
        --ram 500 \
        --file /dev/hdc \
        --network bridge:eth1 \
        --arch ppc64 \
        --sdl \
        --cdrom /root/boot.iso
 
 

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 \
        --file /dev/hdc \
        --network bridge:eth1 \
        --arch ppc64 \
        --sdl \
        --location http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/6/x86_64/os/
 
 

Install a KVM guest, using LVM partition, virtual networking, booting from the host CDROM, using VNC server/viewer

   # virt-install \
        --connect qemu:///system \
        --name demo
        --ram 500 \
        --file /dev/HostVG/DemoVM \
        --network network:default \
        --accelerate \
        --vnc \
        --cdrom /dev/cdrom
 
 

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

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

AUTHOR

Written by Daniel P. Berrange, Hugh Brock, Jeremy Katz 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.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) 2006-2007 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"