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KVM Provider

To interact with the KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) provider, Veewee uses libvirt support provided through the Fog gem.

To interact with the screen, Veewee enables VNC on the created KVM machines and uses the Ruby-VNC gem to send the keystrokes. Sending keystrokes too fast is a problem for this setup as well.

NOTE: VirtualBox doesn't like KVM to be enabled.

Prerequisites

Depending on your operating system you may need to install packages for kvm, qemu and libvirt.

If you have problems compiling the libvirt gem, check if you have the 'dev' parts installed too. f.i apt-get install libvirt libvirt-dev

To check if your kernel can run kvm:

# kvm_ok or kvm-ok command (on Ubuntu at least)
$ kvm_ok

# or look for vmx or svm in /proc/cpuinfo
$ grep '^flags' /proc/cpuinfo | grep -E --color '(vmx|svm)'

The kernel modules needed are the following: kvm, kvm_intel or kvm-amd.

Storage Pool

You need to have at least one storage pool defined in libvirt where your VM images will be stored. You can check all available storage pools with:

$ virsh pool-list

If no storage pool is listed, you can create a new storage pool which saves all VM images in the directory /var/lib/libvirt/images with:

$ mkdir -p /var/lib/libvirt/images
$ cat > /tmp/pool.xml << EOF
<pool type="dir">
  <name>virtimages</name>
  <target>
    <path>/var/lib/libvirt/images</path>
    <format type='qcow2'/>
  </target>
</pool>
EOF
$ virsh pool-create /tmp/pool.xml

Network

You need to have at least one network defined. You can check all available networks with:

$ virsh net-list

If there is no network, consult the documentation of your operating system to find out how to create it. More information can also be found in the libvirt documentation.

If you are using libvirt with a URI different than the default qemu:///system, you need to create a config file for fog.io. If your libvirt endpoint is accessible at qemu+ssh://[email protected]/system you can create the .fog config file with:

$ cat > ~/.fog << EOF
:default:
  :libvirt_uri: qemu+ssh://[email protected]/system
EOF

For more information have a look at the libvirt documentation.

Using veewee kvm Subcommand

You can always get help by using the the built-in help with every command:

$ bundle exec veewee kvm help build

List available templates:

$ bundle exec veewee kvm templates

Use one of the listed templates to define a new box e.g. with:

$ bundle exec veewee kvm define 'My Ubuntu 12.10 box' 'ubuntu-12.10-server-amd64'

Build the box using KVM / Quemu (this will take a while) with:

$ bundle exec veewee kvm build 'My Ubuntu 12.10 box'

You can specify the name of the storage pool and the network to be used when building a VM. Use the options--pool-name and --network-name with the built command:

$ bundle exec veewee kvm build 'My Ubuntu 12.10 box' --pool-name virtimages --network-name default