Using virsh (command line)
By default, virsh will connect as a normal user to his|her own set of
guests on the local machine or, when run as root, to the guests owned by root (known as the system hypervisor).
As we typically share management of servers, we would normally install guests in the system hypervisor.
To access guests in the system hypervisor from a normal user, you need
to call virsh with the --connect option.
virsh --connect qemu:///system ......
To access guests in the system hypervisor on a remote machine, use the
following
virsh --connect qemu+ssh://<remoteserver>/system .....
The following assume you are running as root, connecting to the
system hypervisor on the local machine.
- Starting a guest (and connect to serial console)
-
virsh start <guest> --console
- Connect to guest's serial console
-
virsh console <guest>
- Clean shutdown
-
virsh shutdown <guest>
- Kill a guest
-
virsh destroy <guest>
- Modify boot order to network,hd
-
kvmtool setbootorder --name <guest> --bootorder network,hd
- Deleting a guest
-
kvmtool delete --name <guest>
Note that the guest's disk image will not be deleted: add -purge
if you want to delete the disk image.
Note that kvmtool defaults to the system hypervisor regardless of whether it is called as a normal user or root. It also accepts the shortcut --host
as a way of accessing the system hypervisor on a remote host.
There is also a tool rvirsh {hostname}_{virsh command} which will run a virsh command on the remote KVM server {hostname}. This means that you don't need to remember the clunky QEMU url above.
-- AlastairScobie - 28 Oct 2011