libvirt

libvirt is an API and daemon for managing platform virtualization, supporting virtualization technologies such as LXC, KVM, QEMU, Bhyve, Xen, VMWare, and Hyper-V.

To use libvirt, install the libvirt package, ensure the dbus package is installed, and enable the dbus, libvirtd, virtlockd and virtlogd services. The libvirtd daemon can be reconfigured at runtime via virt-admin(1).

The libvirt package provides the virsh(1) interface to libvirtd. virsh is an interactive shell and batch-scriptable tool for performing management tasks, including creating, configuring and running virtual machines, and managing networks and storage. Note that virsh usually needs to be run as root, as described in the virsh man page:

Most virsh commands require root privileges to run due to the communications > channels used to talk to the hypervisor. Running as non root will return an > error.

However, if you have the polkit and dbus packages installed and you enable the dbus service, libvirtd will grant necessary privileges to any user added to the libvirt group.

An alternative to virsh is provided by the virt-manager and virt-manager-tools packages.

For general information on libvirt, refer to the libvirt wiki and the wiki's FAQ. For an introduction to libvirt usage, refer to the "VM lifecycle" page.