Comment by steve_rambo

2 years ago

libvirt ships with virt-install which also allows for quickly creating and auto-installing Windows and many Linux distributions. I haven't tried it with mac.

Here's a recent example with Alma Linux:

  $ virt-install --name alma9 --memory 1536 --vcpus 1 --disk path=$PWD/alma9.img,size=20 --cdrom alma9.iso --unattended

Then you go for a coffee, come back and have a fully installed and working Alma Linux VM. To get the list of supported operating systems (which varies with your version of libvirt), use:

  $ osinfo-query os

7 comments

steve_rambo

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rwmj  2 years ago

Also

  $ virt-builder fedora-39

if you wanted a Fedora 39 disk image. (Can be later imported to libvirt using virt-install --import).

  • stefanha  2 years ago

    virt-builder is awesome for quickly provisioning Linux distros. It skips the installer because it works from template images. You can use virt-builder with virt-manager (GUI) or virt-install (CLI).

presto8  2 years ago

Does virt-install automatically download the ISOs? When I try it, I get the following message:

    $ virt-install --name alma9 --memory 1536 --vcpus 1 --disk path=$PWD/alma9.img,size=20 --cdrom alma9.iso --unattended
    ERROR    Validating install media 'alma9.iso' failed: Must specify storage creation parameters for non-existent path '/home/foo/alma9.iso'.

mrAssHat  2 years ago

It is not obvious what the result of this would be. What hostname will it have? How will the disk be partitioned? What packages will be installed? What timezone will be set? What keyboard layout will be set? And so on.