virt-manager Installation
virt-manager is a virtual machine manager for Linux and can run both Linux and Windows virtual machines. Its main advantage is speed.
If you’re using Linux did you know that the Linux kernel already has virtual machine capability built in? You don’t need VM Ware, Virtual Box or any other hyper visor. The Linux Kernel can run your Linux or Windows virtual machines right out of the box.
Why use virt-manager?
virt-manager is built to manage QEMU/KVM hyper visor. The QEMU hyper visor can access hardware virtualisation natively via the Linux kernel which means that virtualisation should be a faster and more efficient than some thing like, say, Virtual Box
What do you need?
KVM will work on any Linux distribution but you need CPU hardware virtualisation support enabled. Use the following command to check that CPU virtualisation is enabled:
LC_ALL=C lscpu | grep Virtualization
A positive response of a value is what you’re looking for. For example, for Intel systems the following:
Virtualization: VT-x
If nothing is shown, you need to enable CPU virtualisation in your BIOS.
How to install virt-manager
Install packages
The following is for Debian/Ubuntu based systems.
sudo apt install libvirt qemu virt-manager ebtables
Enable and start services
sudo systemctl enable libvirtd
sudo systemctl start libvirtd
Check the status of service
sudo systemctl start libvirtd
Should return something like:
ibvirtd.service - Virtualization daemon
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/libvirtd.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Sun 2020-04-19 11:21:43 BST; 1 day 3h ago
Docs: man:libvirtd(8)
https://libvirt.org
Main PID: 2067 (libvirtd)
Tasks: 19 (limit: 32768)
Memory: 59.9M
CGroup: /system.slice/libvirtd.service
├─2067 /usr/sbin/libvirtd
├─2290 /usr/sbin/dnsmasq --conf-file=/var/lib/libvirt/dnsmasq/default.conf --leasefile-ro --dhcp-script=/usr/lib/libvirt/libvirt_leaseshelper
└─2291 /usr/sbin/dnsmasq --conf-file=/var/lib/libvirt/dnsmasq/default.conf --leasefile-ro --dhcp-script=/usr/lib/libvirt/libvirt_leaseshelper
Set permissions
To run virt-manager, your user needs to be a member of the libvert group.
sudo usermod -aG libvirt {your user}
How to run virt-manager
Now simply run virt-manager from your desktop launcher.