July | 2010 | Marwalk's Blog

FredPod 100705 Show Notes – Virtual Machine Manager

July 6, 2010

This program was produced on July 5, 2010. In addition to Selections from “yum info recent” on the Fedora Linux project:

Today’s feature is Virtual Machine Manager, including the installation of a virtual CentOS machine on my Fedora 13 workstation.
And we’ll close with a Creative Commons licensed work by
Jenny Beck.

Here are some recently updated items in yum at the Fedora project:

Name : deskbar-applet

Summary : A Gnome applet to allow easy access to various search engines

Description: The goal of DeskbarApplet is to provide an omnipresent versatile

: search interface. By typing search terms into the deskbar entry in

: your panel you are presented with the search results as you type.

:

: Seaches are handled by a series of plugins. DeskbarApplet provides

: a simple interface to manage these plugins to provide you with the

: search results that fit your needs.

Name : ekiga

Summary : A Gnome based SIP/H323 teleconferencing application

Description: Ekiga is a tool to communicate with video and audio over the

: internet. It uses the standard SIP and H323 protocols.

Name : empathy

Summary : Instant Messaging Client for GNOME

Description: Empathy is powerful multi-protocol instant messaging client which

: supports Jabber, GTalk, MSN, IRC, Salut, and other protocols.

: It is built on top of the Telepathy framework.

Name : fedora-easy-karma

Summary : Fedora update feedback made easy

Description: Fedora-easy-karma helps you to easily and fast provide feedback for

: all testing updates that you have currently installed.

Name : finch

Description: A text-based user interface for for Pidgin using libpurple. This can be run

: from a standard text console or from an X Window terminal.

: It uses ncurses and our homegrown gnt library for drawing windows

: and text.

Name : giggle

Summary : A Gtk frontend to git

Description: Giggle is a graphical frontend for the git directory tracker (think

: of gitk on GTK+).

Name : google-chrome-beta

Summary : Google Chrome

Description: The web browser from Google

:

: Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with

: sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.

Name : google-desktop-linux

Summary : Google Desktop for Linux

Description: Google Desktop: Personalize and organize your own computer.

Name : input-pad

Summary : On-screen Input Pad to Send Characters with Mouse

Description: The input pad is a tool to send a character on button to text

: applications.

Name : mail-notification

Summary : Status icon that informs you if you have new mail

Description: Mail Notification is a status icon (aka tray icon) that informs you

: if you have new mail. It works with system trays implementing the

: freedesktop.org System Tray Specification, such as the GNOME Panel

: Notification Area, the Xfce Notification Area and the KDE System

: Tray.

Name : tracker

Summary : An object database, tag/metadata database, search tool and indexer

Description: Tracker is a powerful desktop-neutral first class object database,

: tag/metadata database, search tool and indexer.

:

: It consists of a common object database that allows entities to

: have an almost infinite number of properties, metadata (both

: embedded/harvested as well as user definable), a comprehensive

: database of keywords/tags and links to other entities.

:

: It provides additional features for file based objects including

: context linking and audit trails for a file object.

:

: It has the ability to index, store, harvest metadata. retrieve and

: search all types of files and other first class objects

Name : xsane

Summary : X Window System front-end for the SANE scanner interface

Description: XSane is an X based interface for the SANE (Scanner Access Now

: Easy) library, which provides access to scanners, digital cameras,

: and other capture devices. XSane is written in GTK+ and provides

: control for performing the scan and then manipulating the captured

: image.

You can find additional information on these, and many other recently updated packages, by typing yum info recent at the command line.

The Fredericksburg Linux Users Group, meets on the third Monday and last Saturday of each month. The meetings take place at the main Library in Fredericksburg, Virginia, on Caroline Street in Meeting Room 2:
- You can find the FredLUG calendar by going to Google Groups and searching on F-r-e-d-L-U-G. Near the top of the page is a link to the Google calendar containing the meeting schedule. Feel free to import the .ics calendar files from the Files section into your own calendar.
- Besides the FredLUG Google Group, you’re also welcome on the IRC channel pound FredLUG on irc dot freenode dot net.Today’s feature item is Virtual Machine Manager. That’s a app that uses libvirt to install, manage, and operate virtual machines. The main website for Virtual Machine Manager is virt-manager.org. This website is one of the easiest to follow I’ve ever seen, with no-nonsense how-to’s and other explanatory and practical information.I’ll start by going over the rich summary information on the virt-manager.org home page. Then I’ll go through the step by step process I went through to install a virtual CentOS machine on my Fedora 13 workstation.From the virt-manager.org website, we read that the
  “Virtual Machine Manager” application’s short package name is virt-manager. It’s a desktop user interface for managing virtual machines. It presents a summary view of running domains, their live performance & resource utilization statistics. The detailed view graphs performance & utilization over time. Wizards enable the creation of new domains, and configuration & adjustment of a domain’s resource allocation & virtual hardware. An embedded VNC client viewer presents a full graphical console to the guest domain.
  
  There are four supporting tools in Virtual Machine Manager:
  1. The “Virt Install” tool (virt-install for short command name, virtinst for package name) is a command line tool which provides an easy way to provision operating systems into virtual machines. It also provides an API to the virt-manager application for its graphical VM creation wizard.
  2. The “Virt Clone” tool (virt-clone for short command name, virtinst for package name) is a command line tool for cloning existing inactive guests. It copies the disk images, and defines a config with new name, UUID and MAC address pointing to the copied disks.
  3. The “Virt Image” tool (virt-image for short command name, virtinst for package name) is a command line tool for installing guest operating systems based on a pre-defined master image. The image provides metadata describing the requirements of the operating system, minimal resource allocations, and pre-installed disk.
  4. The “Virtual Machine Viewer” application (virt-viewer for short package name) is a lightweight interface for interacting with the graphical display of virtualized guest OS. It uses GTK-VNC as its display capability, and libvirt to look up the VNC server details associated with the guest. It is intended as a replacement for the traditional vncviewer client, since the latter does not support SSL/TLS encryption of x509 certificate authentication.
  An “Under the Hood” section at virt-manager.org describes virt-manager as follows:
  
  The application logic is written in Python, while the UI is constructed with Glade and GTK+.
  
  The libvirt Python bindings are used to interacting with the underlying hypervisor. This enables the application to be written independent of any particular hypervisor technology.
  
  Initially Xen was the primary platform supported. However, since libvirt 0.2.0 and virt-manager 0.3.1 it is possible to manage QEMU and KVM guests too. It is expected that support for additional hypervisors and virtualization products will expand even further over time as additional libvirt drivers are written.
  
  That’s pretty cool stuff – let’s go play!
  
  We’ll start with a 64-bit Fedora 13 workstation, that has virt-manager installed.
  
  Open virt-manager, enter the machine’s root password, and the small Virtual Machine Manager window appears. The qemu-kvm hypervisor is already installed on this machine, so localhost (QEMU) is shown in the Name column in the Virtual Machine Manager window.
  
  Mouse over the computer icon, and the words “Create a new virtual machine” appear. Not even virt-manager can manage something that doesn’t exist, so an installed machine or install media must be available. It’s kind of like “batteries not included.”
  
  I just happen to have a 64-bit CentOS 5.5 CD ISO set conveniently available on the hard drive. So we’ll install that.
  
  Click the computer icon and a window appears entitled “Create a new virtual machine; Step 1 of 5.” It wants a Name for the new virtual machine, so I’ll just call it CentOS-5.5.
  
  The ways to install the new operating system include
  - Local installation from an ISO or CDROM
  - Network installation via HTTP, FTP, or NFS
  - PXE boot over a network
  - or Import an existing disk image
  I’ll leave the radio button on the default of ISO, and click the Forward button at the bottom.
  
  Now we’re on Stet 2, and the default is “Use ISO image,” which is exactly what I want to do. I click the Browse button and select the first CentOS CD ISO file. Below that are two pull-down menus:
  1. OS type, for which I select “Linux”
  2. Version, for which I select “Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 or later” That’s really what we have in CentOS, which is short for “Community ENTerprise Operating System”
  Clicking the Forward button brings us to Step 3, which is to choose the memory and CPU settings for the new virtual machine. This host machine has nominally 4 GB of RAM and over 5 GB of Swap space. So I’ll be generous and allow the new virtual machine to have 2048 MB of RAM. The new virtual machine will have access to only one of the two processor cores on the host.
  
  The next click of the Forward button brings us to Step 4, which is “Enable storage for this virtual machine.” As the host machine has a two-disk logical volume with over 300 GB of free space, I’ll check “Enable storage for this virtual machine” and allocate 20 GB to it. I’ll un-check the “Allocate entire disk now” box. Doing this will use only the space that the virtual machine actually needs, but still retains its 20 GB limit.
  
  Clicking the Forward button again brings us to the “are you really sure” step. Here at Step 5 virt-manager displays all the settings chosen in the previous steps. It also shows where the virtual machine image will be placed after it’s installed.
  
  Expanding the “Advance options” menu displays the defaults to be installed for the virtual machine’s connection to the host’s network interface. It also displays the “Virt Type,” which in this case will be kqemu; the other option is qemu. The Architecture is set to x86_64; we’re installing a 64-bit virtual machine on a 64-bit host.
  
  Clicking the Finish button launches the CentOS installation process.
  
  I’ve made a note-to-self that when installing a virtual machine, or any application for that matter, it’s best not to multi-task the computer too much. Also, the selecting the defaults first simplifies things for the installer app, and should decrease the chances of hiccups along the way – you can usually customize the installation later, after it’s up and running.
  
  It’s good to remember that installation processes, including this one, require occasional user input to continue past certain points. After all, most machines are not mind readers, yet – I think that, on balance, that’s a good thing.
  
  One thing to remember with most virtual machine applications is that once you click into the virtual machine window, you’re inside that virtual machine. Use Ctrl-Alt to escape the virtual machine window and work directly on the host. Clicking back onto the virtual machine window returns you to be inside that virtual machine.
  
  Virtual Machine Manager is one way to install and use virtual machines.