Virt-manager Lab

So, I was finally able to find some time to complete the FreeBSD virtual machine lab for SYA710. I wasn't able to do it in the lab, as I wasn't able to get it done while on campus, so ended up doing the lab using our China machine remotely. This didn't really require much serious modification to the lab - the only change was the use of a regular file for the main disk rather than a physical disk, as there weren't any partitions to spare on China.

After a few initial failed attempts to install the ports collection from an FTP server, I ended up redownloading the ISO images and using those to get the ports collection installed. Getting X and a copy of the emacs text editor running was relatively simple, though compiling emacs on FreeBSD turned out to be a startlingly lengthy process.



I'm quite impressed with the capabilities of the virsh and virt-manager pairing alongside KVM. The ability to have virtual machines start on boot certainly is a handy one to have around.