Re: A hypervisor for a headless server?
Hi Victor,
On Fri, Jun 02, 2023 at 07:12:14AM +0000, Victor Sudakov wrote:
> > On Fri, Jun 02, 2023 at 03:33:09AM +0000, Victor Sudakov wrote:
> > > So what's the package name for just "kvm" without the GUI tools? Because
> >
> > For someone that wants to run a hypervisor in a non-newbie manner
>
> I don't think running a single daemon with a couple of configuration
> files and a simple CLI interface could be considered "running in a
> non-newbie manner".
Well the thing is, it's a complex piece of software and so most of
the guides out there will direct you to install and use helper tools
like virt-manager.
> > I'm afraid you don't seem to be that willing to do any of your own
> > research.
>
> That's correct, I was not willing to do much of my own research
> of what I think should be a trivial documented best practice.
Okay, well then it seems we disagree on expectations there.
> Now I see that a supported minimal headless configuration probably
> does not exist at all.
I don't think that is correct at all, depending on what you mean by
"supported". You absolutely will find a guide out there to do what
you want, with relative ease I should think.
I just don't know of one that focuses only on the command line
aspect, though I am sure there are some out there.
It definitely is a supported use case however.
> Most articles like this https://ubuntu.com/blog/kvm-hyphervisor or
> this https://help.ubuntu.com/community/KVM/Installation if followed
> bring about lots of GUI packages. Interestingly, the five or six
> articles I've read seem to suggest a slightly different set of packages
> to set up a hypervisor.
I would say that documentation from Ubuntu is likely to be more
"enterprisey". The other thing is, if you're coming from a BSD
background (you mentioned Bhyve) you probably are a lot more used to
there being one way of doing things and that way being thoroughly
documented. Whereas on Linux there tends to be multiple ways and
even the same one can be slightly different on different Linux
distributions.
> Of course not. I'm neither qualified nor willing to hack into the KVM
> hypervisor implementation details. In fact, I've come here for advice
> how to install a minimal headless hypervisor hoping for some docs
> documenting the best practice.
Someone may pop up to give you a good KVM and virsh resource. I
think that's your best route. I hesitate to try it myself because I
haven't touched KVM much recently and my advice would be rusty.
I am using Xen more at the moment, but I generally wouldn't
recommend that to newcomers. I tend to recommend KVM just because
there's so many guides for it out there.
> Is this https://help.ubuntu.com/community/KVM/Installation the
> official guide?
No, because that is a document from Ubuntu about software written by
Red Hat (KVM did not start off as a Red Hat project but has been one
for years now). If you're looking for "official" it should probably
come from Red Hat, but this is a Debian mailing list…
> > If the idea of the installation of binary package dependencies that
> > you never use massively offends you I would suggest that Debian is
> > not an ideal match for you, and you may be better off going with
> > Gentoo or Arch or something.
>
> I must admit it does offend me a bit but not to the degree of using
> Gentoo or Manjaro.
I would probably just install qemu-kvm and accept the bloat of a lot
of packages that I would never use, use virsh to manage the VMs from
command line, and perhaps over time worm out which packages can be
safely removed.
The Debian wiki page for KVM does cover use of "virsh" from the
command line, as well as GUI things like virt-manager.
https://wiki.debian.org/KVM
Thanks,
Andy
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