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Andrew M McCall

Andrew M McCall - Web Developer In Traverse City, Michigan

Setup Virt Manager With Qemu on Arch Linux

A no nonsense guide to setting up virt-manager on Arch Linux with qemu and libvirt

Virt Manager and QEMU is my preferred virtual machine management sytem on Arch Linux.

This is a step by step guide to ge tting up and running with virt manager and QEMU.

  1. Download Dependencies sudo pacman -Syu qemu virt-manager libvirt dnsmasq ebtables iptabvles-nft

It will prompt you to enter a number for qemu provider, I just pick number one.

  1. Enable the libvirtd service sudo systemctl enable --now libvirtd

  2. Add yourself to the libvirt group

sudo usermod -aG libvirt $(whoami)

  1. Reboot the machine

  2. Launch virt manager

  3. File => Add a Connection

  4. QEMU/KVM

  5. Fix Video VGA driver. You probably don’t want VGA. Virtio or QXL is usually better.

You should now be able to use QEMU to setup a new virtual machine with say a fresh Arch iso file.

Enjoy.

Reach out to me @elkcityhazard@indieweb.social if you have any questions.

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