TKC Labs : Libvirt Labs

The Libvirt Labs project provides the lvlab Python application which can be used to manage Libvirt based development environments in a familiar way.

If you are wondering why I would write this, the long answer is here?

Warning

Very much a minimum viable product, it barely works. Do not use this if you have important VMs in libvirt on your dev machine. Don't let a bug ruin your day.

Usage

With lvlab one can create VMs automatically from a YAML syntax manifest configuration that defines the environment, the virtual machines, and the base image information.

• Example YAML config file
• In-depth Example Repo

Installation

• Install the repo latest release into a native Python 3 venv

# Create a venv if you don't have one you already want to use
python -m venv ~/.venvs/lvlab

# Activate the venv
source ~/.venvs/lvlab/bin/activate

# Use pip to install the release wheel for the latest package
pip install https://github.com/memblin/tkc-lvlab-py/releases/download/0.2.1/tkc_lvlab-0.2.1-py3-none-any.whl

# lvlab should be ready for use
lvlab up salt.local

# Show the VM w/ virsh
virsh -c qemu:///system list

• Option B: Clone this repo local, build with poetry build and install the wheel from the ./dist directory.

Help Output

Usage: lvlab [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

  A command-line tool for managing VMs.

Options:
  -h, --help  Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  capabilities  Hypervisor Capabilities
  cloudinit     Render the cloud-init template for a machine defined in...
  destroy       Destroy a Virtual machine listed in the LvLab manifest
  down          Shutdown a machine defined in the Lvlab.yml manifest.
  hosts         Provide /etc/hosts support
  init          Initialize the environment.
  snapshot      Snapshot management commands.
  status        Show the status of the environment.
  up            Start a machine defined in the Lvlab.yml manifest.

Requirements

• Libvirt w/ QEMU configured and functional
• The user should be a member of the libvirt group on the system
• Utilities: virt-install, qemu-img (For now until we can implement these parts via libvirt-python)
• cloud_image_basedir and disk_image_basedir configuration paths need to be writable by the user to run w/o sudo.
  • I usually create these directories in advance and chown them for my user.

Ubuntu 22.04

These packages are required to install and use the lvlab application.

# installs qemu-kvm, libvirt, python3, git, and 2 dependencies needed by python-libvirt
apt install qemu-system-x86 libvirt-daemon-system virt-manager python3 python3-venv python3-pip git pkg-config libvirt-dev