Guest Installation

Contents

4.1. Basic Guest Installation

A virtual machine is comprised of data and operating system files that define the virtual environment. Virtual machines are hosted and controlled by the VM Host Server. This chapter provides generalized instructions for installing virtual machines.

Before creating a virtual machine, consider the following:

For further prerequisites, consult the manuals of the respective operating system to install.

Basic Guest Installation

vm-install provides a graphical assistant that guides you through the guest installtion. I can be invoked by one of the following ways:

  • Enter vm-install at the command line

  • From within Virtual Machine Manager, click New

  • In YaST choose Virtualization+Create Virtual Machine

  1. Start the Create Virtual Machine Wizard as described above and click Forward.

  2. Choose whether to install an operation system or whether to use an already existing image or disk.

  3. Select the operating system you want to install from the list.

  4. The Summary page shows the default configuration for the chosen operating system. Edit the configuration by clicking on a headline. When having chosen to install a system you at least have to either specify an image or a CD/DVD device from which to boot or choose PXE boot. When accepting the configuration with OK, the guest system either boots or starts the installation.

Customizing the Default Settings

Change the proposed configuration by clicking on one of the following headlines in the Summary page of the Create Virtual Machine Wizard:

Name of Virtual Machine

Specify a Name and a Description for the guest. The Name must contain only alphanumeric and _-.:+ characters. It must be unique among all virtual machines on the physical machine. It is used to create and name the virtual machine’s configuration file.

Hardware

Change memory and CPU assignments in this screen. Although possible, it is recommended not to specify values larger than the resources the host system can provide (overcommit), since it may result in fatal errors or performance penalties.

The Advanced Settings let you activate or deactivate ACPI, APIC, and PAE. You can also enable or disable para-virtualized I/O here (virtio). It is recommended not to change the default settings on this screen.

Graphics and Keyboard

Configure the type of virtualized graphics hardware and the Keymap in this dialog. Disabling the graphics card support makes the machine accessible via network services (ssh, VNC) or serial port only.

Disks

Disks: Manage virtual hard disks and CD/DVD drives in this dialog. A virtual machine must have at least one virtual disk—either an existing one or a newly created disk. Virtual disks can be:

  • a single file with a fixed size

  • a single file with that grows on demand (Sparse Image File)

  • a block device, such as an entire disk, partition, or volume. You can list all available devices with the command fdisk -l

For best performance, create each virtual disk from an entire disk or a partition. For the next best performance, create an image file but do not create it as a sparse image file. A virtual disk based on a sparse image file delivers the most disk space flexibility but slows installation and disk access speeds.

By default, a single, file-backed virtual disk is created as a sparse image file in /var/lib/kvm/images/VM_NAME/ where VM_NAME is the name of the virtual machine.

[Note]Supported Disk format

Currently only the raw disk format is supported by Novell.

To create a virtual disk proceed as follows:

  1. Click on Hard disk.

  2. Enter a Source. If creating a file-backed disk, either enter the path directly or click New. When creating a disk from a device, enter the device node (e.g. /dev/sda for an entire disk, or /dev/sda1 for a partition).

  3. Specify the Protocol. Choose file for file-backed virtual disks and phy for device-backed disks. Choosing those protocols will create the disk in raw format.

  4. Enter a Size in GB. This option is only available for file-backed disks.

  5. Choose whether to create a Sparse Image File. This option is only available for file-backed disks. If you want to disable write-access to the disk, choose Read-Only Access.

If you want to install from DVD or CD-ROM, add the drive to the list of available hard disks. To learn about device nodes of the available optical drives, run:

hwinfo --cdrom | egrep "(Device File:|Model:)"

Instead of the real DVD or CD-ROM drive, you can also add the ISO image of an installation medium. Note, that each CD-Rom drive or ISO image can only be used by one guest at the same time.

To add a CD/DVD-ROM device or an ISO image, proceed as follows:

  1. Click on CD-ROM.

  2. Enter a Source. If adding a device, enter it's node. If adding an ISO image, either enter the path directly or click Browse to open a file browser.

  3. Specify the Protocol. Choose file for an ISO image and phy for a device.

The disks are listed in the order in which they have been created. This order also represents the boot order. Use the Up and Down arrows to change the disk order.

Network Adapters

By default, a single virtual network card is created for the virtual machine. It has a randomly generated MAC address that you can change to fit your desired configuration. The virtual network card will be attached to a default bridge configured in the host. You can adjust the configuration in this dialog or create additional virtual network cards.

To add a new network adapter or edit an existing one, proceed as follows:

  1. Click New to add a card or Edit to change the configuration of the selected card.

  2. Choose a Type from the dropdown list.

    [Note]Supported Virtual Network Adapter Types

    Currently only Fully Virtualized Realtek 8139 or the paravirtualized QEMU Virtualized NIC Card (virtio) are supported by Novell.

  3. Choose a Source from the dropdown list.

  4. Choose whether to assign a randomly generated MAC address or manually specify an address.

    [Note]MAC addresses need to be unique

    When choosing Randomly generated MAC address a default address will be assigned. This can result in network problems when more than one network adapter receives the same MAC address. It is recommended to always specify a unique MAC address for each adapter.

Operating System Installation

This dialog is only available when having chosen to install an operating system. The installation can be booted from a virtual disk, from a CD/DVD device, from an ISO image or via PXE boot over the network— use this dialog to configure the boot device.

[Note]Automated Installation

If you are doing an automated installation (for example via SUSE Linux AutoYaST, or NetWare Response File), make sure the installation profile, response file, or script is accessible from the virtual machine.

Refer to your operating system manual for instructions on how to perform an automated installation.

Also use this dialog to configure the behavior of the virtual machine when the operating system is powered off, rebooted or if it crashes. the following options are available

destroy

normal cleanup

restart

a new virtual machine is started in place of the old one

preserve

no cleanup, do not delete temporary, configuration and image files

rename-restart

the virtual machine is not cleaned up, but is renamed and a new domain started in its place

coredump-destroy

a crashed machine's core is dumped before a normal cleanup is performed

coredump-restart

a crashed machine's core is dumped before a normal restart is performed