Re: [gentoo-user] installing virtual machine under gentoo

[Grant Taylor]

On 12/31/21 8:12 AM, Rich Freeman wrote:
> ++

+++ to KVM / libvirt / VirtManager (GUI)

> This is just a front-end to libvirt and kvm, so you're building
> entirely on solid technologies, and anything you set up with the
> GUI can be edited or run or otherwise managed from the command line,
> and vice-versa.

Close, but not quite.

Yes, anything that can be done in the GUI can be done at the CLI / 
config files.

Though I have had some more essoteric things that had to be done at the 
CLI / config files that couldn't be done in the GUI.  This usually has 
to do with more advanced things like iSCSI, Fibre Channel, ZFS pools / 
dataset per guest, etc.

The vast majority of the things that someone starting with KVM will want 
to do can be done with the Virtual Machine Manager GUI.

> It ends up resembling something like VirtualBox or the old VMWare
> Workstation edition, but it is all FOSS and in-kernel so it just is
> more reliable/etc.

Yep.  There are only so many ways that you can present a concept; 
inventory of VMs, VM console, VM management.  They start to look similar 
after a while.

> That said, I only use VMs situationally and at this point just
> about everything I'm doing is in containers if it can be linux-based.
> Way lighter all-around, even if I'm running a full OS in the container.
> I personally prefer to run my containers with nspawn and virtual
> ethernet, so each container gets its own IP via DHCP.

The Virtual Machine Manager GUI can also administer / manage some 
aspects of containers.

I would highly suggest giving Virtual Machine Manager GUI for 
KVM+libvert+qemu a try.  It is probably the quintessential Linux 
virtualization method.

> Oh, and for kvm if you want to run your guests on your main LAN you'll
> probably need to set up a bridge interface.

Yes, bridging is very nice and is my preferred way for most VM use 
cases.  Though it might be a bit more than someone wants to tackle while 
getting their feet wet with virtualization.  Especially if you're trying 
to share a single NIC for other aspects of the hosting system.  It can 
all be done, but there is a lot of minutia (methods and configurations 
therein) that are easy to get lost in.  I'd probably recommend a second 
NIC, even if it's an inexpensive USB NIC just for the virtualization. 
Doing that will avoid complexities that don't need to be dealt with 
/now/.  --  Reduce the number of variables that you're working with at 
one time.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die