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UNFINISHED Creating a VM using virt-manager on Arch Linux/CachyOS

Installing and configuring virt-manager

Installing virt-manager

  • Install virt-manager and other necessary packages.

     sudo pacman -Syu virt-manager qemu-full libguestfs guestfs-tools iptables-nft

  • Enable libvirtd.socket and virtlogd.socket

    systemctl enable --now libvirtd.socket
systemctl enable --now virtlogd.socket

  • Ensure the variable isfirewall_backend=iptables in /etc/libvirt/network.conf for NAT to function.

  • Enable default NAT adapter

    sudo virsh net-start default
sudo virsh net-autostart default

Configuring virt-manager

  • Open Virtual Machine Manager.
  • Goto Edit > Preferences from the tab bar on top.
    • Under General
      • Enable Enable XML Editing
      • Enable Enable libguestfs VM Introspection
    • Under New VM
      • Set x86 Firmware to UEFI
      • Set CPU Default to host-passthrough
      • Set Storage Format to QCOW2 (optional)
  • If QEMU/KVM doesn’t exist like the pic above, Goto File > Add Connection and configure as follows (Make sure you are using the system instance of qemu by ensuring the Generated URI field reads qemu:///system)
  • Double-click on QEMU/KVM if it shows Not Connected.
  • virt-manager is now ready for creating and running VMs.

Creating VMs

Linux Guests

Generally, Linux guests should work OOTB. IF you are facing any issues, consult your distro documentation.

Windows Guests

  • Finally, click the shiny monitor icon near the top-right and create a new VM
  • While using the wizard, choose the installed OS manually by unticking the auto detect checkbox ENSURE OS TYPE IS THE SAME OS YOU ARE GOING TO INSTALL
  • On the last screen, select Customize configuration before install
  • (Windows Guests) Download the VirtIO guest tools iso for Windows so we can have disk and network drivers.
  • (Windows Guests) Add an emulated CD-ROM drive with our VirtIO drivers from Add Hardware > Storage (In the sidebar) > Device Type: CDROM Device and select the VirtIO driver ISO file, then click Ok to close the dialog box
  • On default configurations, virt-manager will default to an emulated SATA disk as your storage drive. To enjoy better performance, select SATA Disk 1 from the sidebar and change Disk Bus: to VirtIO
  • Similarly, you can select NIC:(random characters) from the sidebar and change Device Model: to VirtIO
  • Finally, select Begin Installation on the top-left corner and begin installation
  • (Windows Guests) At the disk partitioning screen, the installer will complain about having no disks to install to. Click Load Drivers, then Browse and goto (VirtIO disk) > vioscsi > (windows version) > AMD64 and click Ok to let the installer find the driver. Afterwards, our main disk should be visible in the disk partitioning screen
  • Continue the installation as normal
  • You can customize the VM after installation by switching from the Graphical Console view to the Hardware Details view on the top-left

Installing Spice and VirtIO guest tools (Windows Guests)

  • After installation has finished, navigate to the emulated CDROM drive with the VirtIO drivers in Windows Explorer and install the guest tools
  • Afterwards, visit these two links inside the VM and install the Spice guest tools

Setting up RDP

  • Enable Remote Connections inside your Windows guest. Google how to.
  • While the VM is running, Goto Hardware Details view, click on the NIC:(random characters) device from the sidebar and take a note of the IP Address
  • Note that the user account you want to RDP to in the Windows guest must have a password set
  • Install a RDP client, krdc is a very nice and robust client.
  • Enter the IP Address in the address field and connect to it
  • On the login prompt, enter your Windows username and password to connect

Setting up GPU Passthrough

  • While the VM is powered off, Goto the Hardware Details view, then Add Hardware > PCI Host Device and select one of the vGPUs/GPU you want to passthrough to the VM.
  • (Intel iGPUs) To avoid the Code 43 error with the i915 sriov dkms drivers, follow this thread and add a <vendor_id> tag

Setting up USB Passthrough

  • While the VM is powered off, Goto the Hardware Details view, then Add Hardware > USB Host Device and select one of the USB Devices you want to passthrough to the VM.