You can create, delete, run, stop, and manage your virtual machines from the command line, using a tool called virsh.

Installing

Install virsh:

1. From a Command Line

   sudo apt-get install virsh

Connecting

Connect to your hypervisor. This can be local, or even remote. In most cases, if you want to manage VMs running on the local hypervisor:

$ virsh connect qemu:///system
Connecting to uri: qemu:///system

Listing VMs

$ virsh list
 Id Name                 State
----------------------------------
  1 foo                  running

Creating a Virtual Machine

• First, download an ISO cd image of some OS you want to run. For Ubuntu, you can find these at:

  • http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

Working with a Running Virtual Machine

Console

Sometimes, it's useful to attach to the console of a running VM, to obtain debugging information, etc.

$ virsh console foo
Connected to domain foo
Escape character is ^]

Details

Deleting a Virtual Machine

More Information

For more complete documentation on virsh, see:

• http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/karmic/en/man1/virsh.1.html