Thanks, Cameron. It seems, for the most part, I can accomplish what I desire. The problem is all of the added steps that are unnecessary with the other VM vendors. We're not talking about one extra step. We're talking about a bunch of extra steps. Is there a benefit to all of these (really unnecessary) steps?
Thanks. Blake On Thu, Aug 10, 2023 at 3:40 PM Cameron Showalter < cameronsplaze...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi, > > I'm trying to learn libvirt, and this surprised me. With #2, would it work > to just use virsh? You can use `virsh dumpxml` to save the vm settings, and > a similar command for the qcow2 storage. Then `virsh define` to restore the > vm on a different machine. IIRC one of the points of libvirt is you don't > want to touch the underlying files directly anyways, instead use tools like > virsh so that the permissions are managed automatically. Plus with this, > all you need is the VM and volume names, not their paths. Is the problem > that UEFI and TPM variables aren't kept in the xml itself? I haven't had to > touch those yet. > > Thanks! > > > On Wed, Aug 9, 2023 at 6:40 AM Blake McBride <blake1...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> Thanks, Cole. >> >> I hope that putting all of the files associated with a particular VM in >> one place and allowing that to be specified in one unique directory would >> be a high priority. Without it, backing up and moving a VM becomes too >> unwieldy, risky, and just a needless hassle. >> >> Thanks. >> >> Blake >> >> >> On Wed, Aug 9, 2023 at 8:12 AM Cole Robinson <crobi...@redhat.com> wrote: >> >>> On 8/8/23 9:47 PM, Blake McBride wrote: >>> > Greetings, >>> > >>> > I make pretty regular use of VMs on my Linux box. I've used KVM, >>> > VirtualBox, and VMWare. I'd like to make more use of KVM/virt-manager >>> > but I am having a number of problems using virt-manager. I'm pretty >>> > sure the problem is me. I just need to understand it more. I think >>> all >>> > of my questions are about storage. I hope someone on this list can >>> help >>> > me. Here are my questions: >>> > >>> > 1. Is there any way of escaping the whole "storage pool" concept? I'd >>> > like to just specify a directory to put my files in rather than needing >>> > to creating a pool each time. Likewise for the ISO I use to gen the >>> > system. I want to be able to simply browse my disk and select the ISO. >>> > >>> >>> In the storage browser UI, there's the button to `browse local` which >>> opens a native file browser, which kinda escapes the pool UI. But no, >>> there's not a simple UI way to create a new directory for each VM. >>> virt-manager and libvirt convention is to place all VM disk images in >>> one directory. Straying from that requires more config and UI clicks >>> >>> > 2. I need all of the files associated with a particular VM in one >>> > independent place so I can back it up and move it as a unit easily. >>> > This includes the cow2 file and all of the VM meta information files. >>> > >>> >>> No unfortunately this is not easy to do with libvirt. XML and disk >>> images are never in the same place, UEFI variables are somewhere else, >>> TPM state is yet another place, etc. And I don't know of a tool that >>> simplifies moving all these details. Maybe some virt-v2v invocation can >>> do it. >>> >>> - Cole >>> >>>
