KVM Cheatsheet
List Running Virtual Machines
virsh list
List All Virtual Machines
virsh list --all
Managing Guest State
Shutdown Guest
virsh shutdown $VM_ID_OR_NAME
Start Guest
virsh start $VM_ID_OR_NAME
Reboot Guest
virsh reboot $VM_ID_OR_NAME
Destroy a Guest
This command is an ungraceful shutdown, much like if you were to pull the power out of a computer. You should use this if a guest becomes unresponsive. It does not delete the guest. The disk image will remain and the guest can be restarted.
virsh destroy $VM_ID_OR_NAME
Suspension
Suspension is a way to immediately “pause” a guest so that it no longer uses the CPU, disk, or network. However, it will continue to reside in memory. You may want to save/load a session instead, which would mean it no longer takes up memory, but is not instant. such that it no longer takes up memory and can be restored to its exact state (even after a reboot), it is necessary to save and restore the guest.
A suspended session will be lost if the host system is rebooted. However, a saved guest does persist.
Suspend Guest
virsh suspend $VM_ID_OR_NAME
Resume Guest
virsh resume $VM_ID_OR_NAME
Defining
Defining a Guest
Defining a guest allows one to start it from its name, rather than having to find it’s XML file and running virsh create $name.xml
. This means that guests will also show in virsh list --all
when they are shutdown.
sudo virsh define filename.xml
Undefine a Guest
In order to use a name over again for a new guest, you have to undefine the old one. You need to remove it’s storage system as well.
sudo virsh undefine $VM_ID
Guest Configuration
You can manually edit the guest’s xml configuration file with:
sudo virsh edit $VM_ID
Changes will not take effect until the guest is rebooted List OS Variants
When creating a guest with virt-install you need to specify the –os-variant. To get a list of acceptable values (on Ubuntu 16.04), install the libosinfo-bin package before running the command below:
osinfo-query os
Rename guest
virsh domrename $OLD_NAME $NEW_NAME
You can only do this whilst the guest is not running.
Guest Start on Boot (Autostart)
sudo virsh autostart $VM_ID
To disable Guest Autostart
sudo virsh autostart --disable $VM_ID
Resizing Memory
Run the following command to bring up the config for the guest.
sudo virsh edit $VM_ID
Change the memory and currentMemory fields to be the size you want in KiB.
programster - kvm cheatsheet_004.png
Now use virsh to shutdown and startup the container for the changes to take effect.
Resizing Memory With Script
VM_ID="my_vm_id"
NEW_AMOUNT="4000"
EDITOR='sed -i "s;[0-9]*</currentMemory>;$NEW_AMOUNT</currentMemory>;"' virsh edit $VM_ID
EDITOR='sed -i "s;[0-9]*</memory>;$NEW_AMOUNT</memory>;"' virsh edit $VM_ID
sudo virsh shutdown $VM_ID
sudo virsh start $VM_ID
Do not use virsh memtune. See here for more details. CPU Management Discover CPU Scheduling Parameters
sudo virsh schedinfo $VM_ID
Permanently Set CPU Shares For Live Running Instance
sudo virsh schedinfo $VM_ID \
--set cpu_shares=[0-262144] \
--live \
--current \
--config
Get the CPU Pinning Settings for a Guest
virsh vcpupin blog.programster.org
Example output:
VCPU: CPU Affinity
----------------------------------
0: 0-3
1: 0-3
I got the output above because I gave the guest access to 2 vCPUs but didn’t pin anything. Pin A CPU
If I wanted to set the cores that a guest can use, I could do the following:
virsh vcpupin blog.programster.org 0 2
That will set the first vCPU (the one with ID 0) to only run on core ID 2. Thus the output of virsh vcpupin blog.programster.org changes to:
VCPU: CPU Affinity
----------------------------------
0: 2
1: 0-3
Pinning could be a great way to limit the effect a certain guest has on others, or to give a guest a dedicated core etc.
Guest Console
Enter Guest’s Console
sudo virsh console $VM_ID
Exit Guest’s Console
Use the following keyboard shortcut (not a command):
Cntrl-]
Saving
Save Guest
virsh save $VM_ID $FILENAME
Load Guest
virsh restore $FILENAME
The filename here is the same file that you saved to in the previous command, not one of the other guest files!
Simple Guest Clone
virt-clone \
--original $VM_TO_CLONE \
--auto-clone \
--name $NEW_VM_NAME
Networking
List Running Network Configs
virsh net-list
List All Network Configs
virsh net-list --all
You can find network configs stored in
/home/stuart/network-configs/
Edit Network Config
sudo virsh net-list $NETWORK_NAME
Create Temporary Network Config
sudo virsh net-create --file $ABSOLUTE_FILE_PATH
Create Permanent Network Config
sudo virsh net-define --file $ABSOLUTE_FILE_PATH
Example Bridge Network Config File
<network>
<name>examplebridge</name>
<forward mode='route'/>
<bridge name='kvmbr0' stp='on' delay='0'/>
<ip address='192.168.1.1' netmask='255.255.255.0' />
</network>
Start Network Config
sudo virsh net-start $NETWORK_ID
Enable Network Autostart
net-autostart –network $NETWORK_ID
Disable Network Autostart
net-autostart \
--network $NETWORK_ID \
--disable
Example Manual Network Config With Bridge
This is an example /etc/network/interfaces
file for Ubuntu users.
# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
# The primary network interface
auto p17p1
iface p17p1 inet manual
auto kvmbr0
iface kvmbr0 inet static
address 192.168.1.19
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.1.0
broadcast 192.168.1.255
gateway 192.168.1.254
bridge_ports p17p1
bridge_stp off
bridge_fd 0
bridge_maxwait 0
Here is a netplan version:
# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# For more information, see netplan(5).
network:
version: 2
renderer: networkd
ethernets:
enp39s0:
dhcp4: no
bridges:
kvmbr0:
addresses: [ 192.168.1.186/24 ]
gateway4: 192.168.1.1
nameservers:
addresses:
- 8.8.8.8
- 8.8.4.4
interfaces:
- enp39s0
Configure VM To Use Manual Bridge
If you manually set the bridge up with the section above rather than through using the virsh net commands, this is how to configure deployed guests make use of it:
sudo virsh edit $VM_ID
Find the following section
<interface type='network'>
<mac address='52:54:00:4d:3a:bd'/>
<source network=''/>
<model type='virtio'/>
<address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x02' function='0x0'/>
</interface>
Change it to be like so:
<interface type='bridge'>
<mac address='52:54:00:4d:3a:bd'/>
<source bridge='[bridge name here]'/>
<model type='virtio'/>
<address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x02' function='0x0'/>
</interface>
Now run the following two commands since reboots wont work.
sudo virsh shutdown $VM_ID
sudo virsh start $VM_ID
Add Network Interface to VM
I used the command below to add a NIC to my guest that uses my host’s bridge interface called kvmbr1.
virsh attach-interface \
--domain guest1 \
--type bridge \
--source kvmbr1 \
--model virtio \
--config
If your guest is running at the time, you need to add the –live parameter.
You could specify a mac address with –mac but without it, one will be generated randomly.
Snapshotting
Create Internal Snapshot
virsh snapshot-create $VM_ID
You can take snapshots of guests whilst they are running. Whilst the snapshot is being taken, the guest will be “paused”. The “state” of the guest is also saved. Create Internal Snapshot With Name
sudo virsh snapshot-create-as $VM_ID $SNAPSHOT_NAME
Create Internal Snapshot With Name and Description
sudo virsh snapshot-create-as $VM_ID $SNAPSHOT_NAME $DESCRIPTION
Create Internal Snapshot With Name and Description Using File
If you just love writing xml, then you can create a file like so:
<domainsnapshot>
<name>Name for the snapshot</name>
<description>Description for the snapshot</description>
</domainsnapshot>
… then pass it to virsh snapshot-create to create the snapshot
virsh snapshot-create $VM_ID $FILEPATH
Create External Snapshot
List Snapshots
sudo virsh snapshot-list $VM_ID
Snapshot-list defaults to being in alphabetical rather than chronological order. If you want to find out what your latest snapshots are, you may wish to add the optional
--tree
or--leaves
parameters.
Restore Snapshot
virsh snapshot-revert $VM_ID $SNAPSHOT_NAME
Delete Snapshot
virsh snapshot-delete $VM_ID $SNAPSHOT_NAME
More snapshot functionality can be found in Qcow2 Conversion and Snapshotting
Edit Snapshot
If you use virsh with internal qcow2 snapshots and you decide to move the file to another location, you will not be able to restore those snapshots. This is easily fixed by editing the snapshots and updating the filepath.
sudo virsh snapshot-edt $VM_ID_OR_NAME $NAME_OF_SNAPSHOT
Liens
- Managing KVM on RHEL 6 using the virsh Command-line Tool
- Red Hat Docs - Chapter 20. Managing guests with virsh
- Libvirt Docs - net-create
- Libvirt Docs - net-define
- Ubuntu Docs - KVM/Managing
- virt-clone(1) - Linux man page
- IBM - Working with libvirt cgroups
- Libvirt - memtune
- Using CGroups with libvirt and LXC/KVM guests in Fedora 12
- KVM - Changing Memory of Guests Live
- Stack Overflow - Changing the dhcp IP range in Virbr0’s XML file using virsh in bash script
- Nixcraft - KVM: Start a Virtual Machine / Guest At Boot Time
- Nixcraft - How to rename KVM virtual machine (VM) domain with virsh command
- Redhat Docs - 8.3 LIBVIRT NUMA TUNING