KVM and libvirt tool reference¶
Part of the KVM overview. What each virsh, virt-* and qemu tool is for.
| Tool | Purpose |
|---|---|
virsh |
Manage domains, networks, pools, snapshots |
virt-install |
Create VMs |
virt-clone |
Clone VMs |
virt-manager, virt-viewer |
GUI management and console |
virt-top, virt-df |
Resource use per VM |
virt-builder |
Build VM images from templates |
virt-customize, virt-edit, virt-cat, virt-ls, virt-copy-in, virt-copy-out, virt-tar-in, virt-tar-out |
Change or read files inside an image |
virt-sysprep, virt-sparsify, virt-resize, virt-filesystems, virt-inspector, virt-diff |
Prepare, shrink, resize, inspect images |
virt-xml, virt-xml-validate |
Edit / validate domain XML |
virt-host-validate, virt-what |
Check host / detect virtualization |
guestfish |
Interactive image shell |
qemu-img |
Create, resize, convert, check images |
osinfo-query |
List valid --os-variant values |
Further reading: https://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Main_Page, https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/create-vm-using-the-qcow2-image-file-in-kvm