Any virt-manager fans here?

WetGeek

I've been using VirtualBox for years, but I've seen so many references to virt-manager, I thought I'd give it a try. Most of the create-a-vm process is self-explanatory, but I'm having problems figuring out how to connect to a network.

It seems to me that virt-manager ought to be able to list the available connections, or automatically select the active one--as VirtualBox does--but it seems we must identify it by name. No worries, I can figure that out with an iwconfig command in the terminal. But that doesn't work.

This host machine, running on Solus 4.5 Plasma had no problem connecting to my network using that connection, so a briged adapter should work fine, as it does with VirtualBox.

Then I tried to use NAT, but that resulted in another error. It required me to start a network for NAT, and that didn't work. The third option, Macvtap, I've never heard of, so I didn't even try that one.*

Is there any kind of safe setting for this feature that always works? What do others use with virt-manager?

*I tried it later, though. I got a waring that it won't work for host/VM connections.

And when I tried it anyway, this was the result:

synth-ruiner

sorry this isn't helpful, but on my VM I just left the network as the default "NAT" and everything worked fine. best of luck to you!

zmaint

I wish I could help, but it has always just worked.

I think you will want to set your video to virtio (running off of memory here). I think the default is laggy.

I prefer virt manager over all the other options I've used.

WetGeek

Thanks for everyone's comments. From what I've seen so far, I could really like virt-manager except for one issue. In order to access the NAS shares on my local network, I have to create VMs with a bridged network connection. In other words, the virtual NIC needs to use the same network that the host machine is on. That's not a trivial thing to do with virt-manager. it involves starting libvirtd, which creates a virtual network. And getting the host machine into that virtual network (it doesn't get there by default) and adding my NAS server just about requires a Linux network engineer to write scripts and various config files, and so on. I've learned a lot by researching this for the last couple of days.

To do that on VirtualManager, I simply change the network setting from NAT to bridged, and the rest is like elvin magic. It just works. So my host is able to communicate with the VMs, the VMs are able to use the host's resources, and everybody has access to my NAS shares. I even use some symlinks to replace most of the folders in my /home directory with the equivalent shares.

I've been a software engineer for decades, but not a network engineer, and especially not a Linux network engineer. I've decided that I just don't need virt-manager all that much. I'm a little bit disappointed, because there are things about it that I really like, but I'm happy with VBox, so it's not really a big deal.