[libvirt-users] Problem using virt-manager to create a VM remotely
Well, not that remote. I'm trying to get it working from my laptop to an ancient workstation behind me I use for testing. I appear to get the connection okay. virt-manager --connect qemu+ssh://root@<host_ip>/system I can click on the entry on the panel that comes up and see facts about the remote machine. I then tried the "Create a new virtual machine" item on the tool bar. Fine so far. I get a nice looking panel for New VM and since this is just an experiment, I call it "test". The correct Connection is showing, ie the host ip (QEMU). I accept the default "Local install media (ISO or CDROM)" and go to the next panel. I take the "Use ISO Image" and then give it the full directory path and name of the iso on the remote machine <host_ip>. I have tried leaving OS Type and version Generic; I have also tried setting them to match the iso (an 11.10 i386 server). When I attempt to go forward, it gives me an error panel, "Error Setting install media location. Checking installer location failed: Could not find media '/KdevArchive1/ubuntu-11.10-server-i386.iso' On the off chance that it was trying to mount the iso from my laptop instead of the test machine, I have also tried pointing to the path of the same iso there as well with no joy. I am finding very little documentation on the GUI mode and none of it seems to give me any indication of what is going wrong. Ideas?
On 03/27/2012 02:08 PM, Dale Amon wrote:
I accept the default "Local install media (ISO or CDROM)" and go to the next panel. I take the "Use ISO Image" and then give it the full directory path and name of the iso on the remote machine <host_ip>. I have tried leaving OS Type and version Generic; I have also tried setting them to match the iso (an 11.10 i386 server). When I attempt to go forward, it gives me an error panel, "Error Setting install media location. Checking installer location failed: Could not find media '/KdevArchive1/ubuntu-11.10-server-i386.iso'
You've hit a sore point of mine. Libvirt is not very smart about distinguishing which file names are relative to the client and which are relative to the remote libvirtd; and some APIs will fail if the file name does not exist on the client, even though the API is documented as only needing access to the file on the host. This has come up before, and even had some ideas on how to improve things, but as with many pet peeves, it takes time to implement it and isn't at the top of my priority list. My personal workaround is to make sure that I have a storage pool associated with every directory that I might want to access files on when accessing a remote libvirtd. virt-manager is lousy at letting you specify remote absolute file names, but is good at letting you access storage volume names that are relative to a remote storage pool. But even that could be improved - right now, <domain> XML must specify disks as /path/to/file, although allowing an expression in terms of pool:volume would make life a lot easier.
I am finding very little documentation on the GUI mode and none of it seems to give me any indication of what is going wrong.
Most gui issues with virt-manager are better discussed on virt-tools-list@redhat.com. This list tends to be lower-level with how to use libvirt, rather than how to use the guis built on top of libvirt. -- Eric Blake eblake@redhat.com +1-919-301-3266 Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org
Thanks. That sorted things out. I created a couple 'pool' directories, wrote the xml for them, 'pool-define'd to load them and the rest was a piece of cake.
participants (2)
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Dale Amon -
Eric Blake