[TriLUG] creating KVM virtual machines

[Joseph S. Tate]

Unless I'm scripting something, I just use virt-manager + libvirt to
create images.  It's all Gooey and point/clicky.  You can select 32 or
64 bits when installing, but I think that's mostly for descriptive
purposes (see note 1 below).  You have to have the libvirtd daemon
running, but that's not a big deal, plus it starts up VMs after reboot
and shuts them down when the host shuts down, so I like it.

I also use VirtualBox more than KVM these days because I typically am
running Xorg, and am not running headless guests.

Just my 2¢

As for your question, virt-install is a libvirt tool, so it handles
more than just KVM.  It could also generate and start Xen and other
Virtualized guests.  I'm not sure what vm-install is, but it may be a
novell created tool to only work with Xen.

note 1: As for the x86 on x64, the CPU will still be a 64 bit cpu to
the guest (especially if you have the paravirt cpu extensions on your
processor), but the kernel will be compiled to 32 if you install using
32 bit media, and will run in 32 bit mode.  If you want a virtualized
i586 cpu on x86_64, you'll have to use an emulator like QEMU.  If you
just want to run 32 bit kernels and apps, you don't need to emulate
the processor.

On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 10:12 PM, Paul Boyle <pboyle at uwo.ca> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> What's the difference between the command line programs vm-install and virt-install?
>
> From my looking at it virt-install can specify an --arch parameter whereas the vm-install can only install a vm as the native CPU architecture. It is also seems that vm-install does more of the legwork in setting up a network bridge.
>
> I've googled around trying to find a good compare/contrast of these programs but I haven't found one yet. Can someone explain the differences between these two programs?
>
> In particular, I am interested in setting up an vm with a i586 architecture on a x86_64 host.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Paul
>
> --
> Paul D. Boyle, Ph. D.
> Manager, X-ray Facility
> Department of Chemistry
> Western University
> London, ON N6A 5B7
> Canada
> --
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-- 
Joseph Tate
Personal e-mail: jtate AT dragonstrider DOT com
Web: http://www.dragonstrider.com