Re: kvm/qemu virtual machine can't find hard drives
On 8/17/17 1:06 PM, Gary Roach wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Debian 9 (Stretch) system
> KDE Desktop
> MSI970A-G43 motherboard
> AMD FX 4350 processor - not overclocked
>
> Ive been trying to get a virtual machine set up and have run into problems
> with both virtualbox and kvm/qemu packages. I have a very messy project (Elmer
> fem) and want things completely walled off from my regular system. So I opted
> for a virtual machine.
>
> The kvm/qemu package seems to install properly (no errors). But when I try to
> install Debian 9 into it, the installer can't find my two hard drives sda and
> sdb. It then ask me to pick from a long list of drivers. I haven't been able
> to determine what the drivers should be for my system. Sda is boot drive, 500
> Gb WD160 and the there is a WD10 1 Tb, ext4 blank drive. Both drives show up
> on Dolphin so they must be mounted.
>
> Am I missing some library or something? Any help will be greatly appreciated.
>
> Gary R.
>
Usually the qemu vm runs from a file (created by qemu-img) set up as a disk
drive by qemu. I use Virtual Machine Manager (along with libvirtd) which can do
all the hard stuff for you. I usually make my own virtual drive files with
qemu-img and let Virtual Machine Manager control access to them. libvirtd does
a good job of letting you run qemu from your user account and access the
necessary resources on the host machine. libvirtd sets up all the network
devices and bridges needed to access the real world. Virtual Machine Manager can
connect to USB devices on the host machine, manage CD drive access (either to
hardware cd drive or iso images ... like an install image), boot devices
(usually the sda drive or cd drive), the amount of memory for each vm and
additional drive you may want (like to try multi disk raid). Virtual Machine
Manager opens up a vnc (or spice) window where you can see the output from the
vm when it is running on your kde desktop .. either text mode or graphical
mode. I have about 15 vm's defined. One runs debian with kde to handle my
weather station. Another runs win 10 (ug) so I can do my taxes. Most of the
others are debian and kde testing and unstable installs that I use to test
updates before I commit them to my host desktop machine.
Most debian installs work easily with a 20 or 20 GB virtual drive. You create
the file necessary with a command like this:
qemu-img create -f qcow2 /home/img/Mymachine/drive.img 30G
This assumes that /home is mounted on your 1TB drive. Looks like the packages
to get you started are libvirt-daemon-system and virt-manager.
Hope this helps.
...bob
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