Manage KVM QEMU virtual machines with virt

VM Operations

List all

sudo virsh list --all

Start machine

sudo virsh start debian12

Edit machine

sudo virsh edit debian12

Power off machine

sudo virsh shutdown debian12

Force shut power off

sudo virsh destroy debian12

Clone machine

virt-clone --original debian12 --name debian12-copy --file /var/lib/libvirt/images/debian12-copy.qcow2

Network

List

sudo virsh net-list --all

Start network, must be done before the VM can start

sudo virsh net-start default

Network info

virsh net-info default

Get VMs IP addresses

virsh net-dhcp-leases default

Article on how to set up networks in KVM

Mount disk shared with host

This is in virt manager gui

• Set up shared memory
• Press "Add hardware", select "Filesystem"
• Select the host folder, and add a name for Target path like this "mount_tag_ssd1"

Typical error message: Unable to find a satisfying virtiofsd

Add the path inside the xml right under driver tag:

  <binary path="/run/current-system/sw/bin/virtiofsd"/>

Inside the host you mount it like this

#virtiofs
mount_tag_ssd1 /mnt/ssd1 virtiofs rw,relatime       0       0