Package: virt-manager Version: 0.8.3-3 Severity: normal Tags: sid Unfortunately the latest version of virt-manager has become unusable for me due to numerious issues regarding storage. The usage of virt-manager introduces a very significant loss of functionality and increase in difficulty and frustration over just using qemu-kvm commandline by itself + a couple shell scripts. The goal of the virt-manager seems to be to provide a easier/friendlier/network-aware way of doing things, so this is pretty much a huge problem for me. The basic problems include (but are not limited to): - Cannot create a disk image then use it later in the creation of a new VM. During the "Create a new virtual machine step 4 of 5" if I choose "Select Managed or existing storage" and then select a image I created previously in the virt-manager interface then I get a 'Storage Parameter Error: Name 'centos.img' already in use by other volume'. Yes, of course the name is already in use.. the name is already in use by the volume I am trying to select. - Cannot 'eject' a 'iso' image. During the installation of many operating systems it is neccessary to use multiple ISO images. During the base install of CentOS your required to have present no less then 4 ISO images and at least 1of6 and 3of6 are going to be used. If I try to 'disconnect' a ISO image through virt-manager then it tells me I must reboot the VM for the changes to go into effect. Never before it was necessary to reboot a machine to change a CDROM iso image. - In the virsh shell there is no way I can tell the VM to eject the CDROM or any other storage device. There exist commands to do this, but as far as I can tell there is no way to list the devices currently used by a 'domain'. - The use of 'domain' is very confused in virsh. In some virsh commands use the term 'domain' to refer to a host + VM solution URI... like qemu:///system. However other commands use the term domain to refer to a actual virtual machine instance. So it's confusing. Probably should refer to 'qemu:///system' type URIs as 'hosts' and VMs as domains. - The virsh commands also require you to use XML configuration files to reference storage volumes so as far as I can tell there is no way you can use virsh to deal with ISO images that 'browse' to that are not formally created in the virt-manager interface. - It is currently impossible to formally create a ISO image in the virt-manager interface. If you choose to create a 'iso' file in the "host details" "Add a Storage Volume" dialog then the GUI silently fails. It gives no useful error or any indication at all the program failed completely to create a ISO image file. In the /var/log/system it indicates that libvirt attempted to use "kvm-img" to create the ISO file, which will not work. - I cannot find a reasonable way to 'import' a existing storage file (like a ISO file) into virt-manager. Not sure if the problem is lack of documentation or lack of functionality. I can look up the XML format and probably figure out how to manually create a XML file that will reference a ISO image, but it's just not worth it. - The 'browse for iso image' used during creation of a new VM only works if your running virt-manager on localhost. And there are a few things like that. Another, more nitpick thing, is the lack of VDE support. Virtual Distributed Ethernet is extremely handy tool that can be use to create complex network topographies on a single machine or even tunnel between multiple hosts. It can be used to create and simulate typical networks and is very nice for training or network simulation purposes. 'Bridges' are a alright substitution, but are much more difficult to work with if your creating routers and stuff like that virtually. So needless to say I did not even have the ability to finish a CentOS installation. I am probably being stupid and I could probably download the CentOS DVD images or Live-CD or something like that.. but that would pretty much be a huge waste of my time since I already have the full set of CentOS cdrom images and can just go back to using kvm on the command line directly (+screen and +simple shell script to handle the numerous options) and gain a large amount of usability and features that way. Hopefully these issues will get addressed or whatever so that Virt-manager can someday be on par with other GUI tools that other VM solutions enjoy.
-- System Information: Debian Release: squeeze/sid APT prefers unstable APT policy: (500, 'unstable') Architecture: i386 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-3-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash Versions of packages virt-manager depends on: ii librsvg2-common 2.26.0-1 SAX-based renderer library for SVG ii python 2.5.4-9 An interactive high-level object-o ii python-dbus 0.83.1-1 simple interprocess messaging syst ii python-glade2 2.16.0-2 GTK+ bindings: Glade support ii python-gnome2 2.28.0-2 Python bindings for the GNOME desk ii python-gtk-vnc 0.3.10-5 A VNC viewer widget for GTK+ (Pyth ii python-gtk2 2.16.0-2 Python bindings for the GTK+ widge ii python-libvirt 0.7.7-3 libvirt Python bindings ii python-support 1.0.7 automated rebuilding support for P ii python-urlgrabber 3.1.0-5 A high-level cross-protocol url-gr ii python-vte 1:0.22.5-3 Python bindings for the VTE widget ii virtinst 0.500.2-2 Programs to create and clone virtu Versions of packages virt-manager recommends: ii libvirt-bin 0.7.7-4 the programs for the libvirt libra Versions of packages virt-manager suggests: ii virt-viewer 0.2.1-1 Displaying the graphical console o -- debconf-show failed -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected]
