How to create a new VM with qemu-kvm from iso ?

bugswontgo · #1 27th July 2011, 05:46 AM

After patiently waiting for 30+ hours during install attempts with the "Virtual Machine Manager", I realized that it wasn't going to happen.

So then I read about a possibly working version, qemu-kvm

How to use this to get a VM install up and going ?

For instance, this command appears to begin an install, but where does it actually create a vm image from that?

qemu-kvm -m 512 -cdrom /iso/Fedora-14-i386-DVD.iso

Thanks

stevea · #2 27th July 2011, 05:59 AM

You need to manually create the disk image before starting qemu-kvm, and then decide the file on the command line.
It will work but it's a poor approach.

I use virt-manager intensively and it works great. You need to debug that problem

Do you have the libvirtd service running ?
These commands cause libvirtd to start at boot, and also start immediately. This service must be running before using "Virtual Machine Manager"

sudo chkconfig libvirtd on
sudo service libvirtd start

bugswontgo · #3 27th July 2011, 06:22 AM

Those services are running, its just very slow.

Hm, I gave it 1 gig of ram and access to both cpu's

I remember installing fedora on a pentium 3 or therabouts with 500 megs of ram.

It was about one order or magnitude faster ( 10 x 10 ).

ozjd · #4 27th July 2011, 07:56 AM

virt-manager can use hardware virtualization if it is available but it may need to be turned on in the bios. It improves performance a lot.

bodhi.zazen · #5 27th July 2011, 04:18 PM

qemu, without the hardware virtualization (kvm) is going to be slow.

Personally in that event (your CPU does not support kvm), I find VirtualBox will give you better performance.

stevea · #6 28th July 2011, 07:14 AM

I agree with bodhi.zazen & ozjd

You need to see if your CPU supports hardware virtualization. It ma ybe disabled in the BIOS.

If you don't have hardware virtualization, then virtualbox or vmware will be better choices.

cuban_cigar · #7 8th March 2012, 11:21 AM

VirtualBox doesnt support fc13, and VM wants money.

smr54 · #8 8th March 2012, 12:55 PM

I have had no trouble running versions of Fedora in VirtualBox---why do you say they don't support F13? (I freely grant I may be missing something.)

VMware has VMware-server and VMware-player for free. VMware-player might be closer to what you're looking for--VMware-server is a web based interface, rather cumbersome if I remember correctly. VMware-player, nowadays, is what pre 2.x VMware-server was--player now allows you to install (in the old days, it only worked with pre-configured virtual machines.)