Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2011 07:09:24 -0600
From: Jesse Young <jlyo@jlyo.org>
To: Natanael Copa <ncopa@alpinelinux.org>
Cc: alpine-devel@lists.alpinelinux.org
Subject: Re: [alpine-devel] advice for virtualization on desktop
Message-ID: <20111209070924.4dabfd44@telperion.jlyo.org>
In-Reply-To: <20111208075522.5804d2a6@ncopa-desktop.nor.wtbts.net>
References: <20111208075522.5804d2a6@ncopa-desktop.nor.wtbts.net>
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On Thu, 8 Dec 2011 07:55:22 +0100
Natanael Copa <ncopa@alpinelinux.org> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I have been using qemu for some time for testing and network
> development.
>
> I think raw qemu is a bit cumbersome since i need to keep track of the
> mac address of all the guests. When I create a guest i create a
> start.sh script where i stuff in the mac address. (I sometimes need
> multiple NICs in guests and will need multiple guest vlans etc.
> vde, tap and bridges is what I use). This works ok, but I think it
> could be done better. (I find it cumbersome to manage the guest mac
> addr manually. assign a mac, and keep track of what guest has what
> mac)
>
> So I am asking for advice.
>
> I think I have the following alternatives:
>
> Switch to Xen.
>
> Use libvirtd.
>
> Make virtualbox work.

I used to work with virtualbox, but I found that when I would run a
guest for a couple of days it (the Windows XP guest) would crash. I
switched to raw qemu-kvm to libvirtd/virt-manager.

> In addition to N different alpine boxes I will install at least one
> Windows 7 guest. I'd like to have an ubuntu guest and a fedora guest.
> And fire up a random distro once in a while.
>
> So far, Xen dom0 boots up, but xorg seems to fail (Sandy bridge
> graphics) Interestingly enough it seemed to work with the ATI card
> even if switching to console with ctrl-alt-1 didnt work.
>
> I am having issues getting started with libvirtd. (how do i create a
> new qemu guest? how do i start it, stop it?)

I've been using the virt-manager (pygtk) utility with some
success. it's fairily easy to work with. I couldn't get raw libvirtd
working, too much XML crap, and no apparent starting point, so I
looked up virt manager.  I found libvirtd to be really obnoxious
when it sticks it's fingers into my iptables/dnsmasq/radvd setup. I
worked around this by setting the iptables path, etc. to /bin/true at
configure time. So far I haven't come across any issues with it. If
you're doing fancy network testing, you'd probably want to do this
manually anyways. I was suprised libvirtd doesn't hand off it's
networking configuration to a script.

Just my 2c
Jesse


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