Virt-install

External

• RHEL7 Virtualization Administration - Creating Guests with virt-install

Internal

• Linux Virtualization Operations
• Linux Virtualization Configuration

Overview

virt-install is a command-line utility for provisioning new virtual machines. It comes as part of the "virt-install" RPM package.

virt-install needs root privileges to work.

Documentation

virt-install --help

Mandatory Options

Guest Virtual Machine Name

The name of the guest virtual machine must be specified with --name

Memory Amount

virt-install needs the amount of memory allocated to the guest, in MiB, which must be specified with --memory.

Guest Storage Specification

One of the following must be specified:

--disk

Specifies guest storage, relative to the storage provided by the virtualization host. The most common option is to refer storage from a storage pool, but other options are also available.

--disk size=10

Specified a new 10 GiB image on the default storage pool.

--disk /storage-pool-path/volume-path,cache=none

--disk device=cdrom,bus=scsi

--disk=?

Installation Method Option

Installation Method Options:

 --cdrom CDROM         CD-ROM installation media
 -l LOCATION, --location LOCATION
                       Installation source (eg, nfs:host:/path,
                       http://host/path, ftp://host/path)
 --pxe                 Boot from the network using the PXE protocol
 --import              Build guest around an existing disk image
 --livecd              Treat the CD-ROM media as a Live CD
 -x EXTRA_ARGS, --extra-args EXTRA_ARGS
                       Additional arguments to pass to the install kernel
                       booted from --location
 --initrd-inject INITRD_INJECT
                       Add given file to root of initrd from --location
 --os-variant DISTRO_VARIANT
                       The OS variant being installed guests, e.g.
                       'fedora18', 'rhel6', 'winxp', etc.
 --boot BOOT           Configure guest boot settings. Ex:
                       --boot hd,cdrom,menu=on
                       --boot init=/sbin/init (for containers)
 --idmap IDMAP         Enable user namespace for LXC container. Ex:
                       --idmap uid_start=0,uid_target=1000,uid_count=10

Optional Configuration

Network Specification

The network specification is optional, if not defined, a ? will be configured on the guest. Otherwise, it can be specified with '--network NETWORK-SPEC', as follows:

TODO

--network bridge=mybr0

If using a bridge, the bridge must be previously created, as described here Bridged Networking Configuration.

--network network=my_libvirt_virtual_net

--network network=mynet,model=virtio,mac=00:11..

--network none

Virtualization Platform Options

-v, --hvm

This guest should be a fully virtualized guest.

-p, --paravirt

This guest should be a paravirtualized guest.

--container

This guest should be a container guest.

--virt-type

Represents the hypervisor name to use ("kvm", "qemu", "xen", etc.)

Access to a Host Directory

"--filesystem" can be used to specify a host directory to be available on the guest.

Example:

--filesystem /my/host/source/dir,/dir/in/guest