{"id":2241,"date":"2020-12-29T12:46:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-29T11:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nico-maas.de\/?p=2241"},"modified":"2020-12-27T13:14:10","modified_gmt":"2020-12-27T12:14:10","slug":"wsl2-win10-virt-manager-for-kvm-on-windows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nico-maas.de\/?p=2241","title":{"rendered":"[WSL2\/Win10] virt-manager for kvm on Windows"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

kvm Virtualisiation is great, however, useable tools to create and manage said VMs are rare. The best tool for the job, virt-manager<\/a> is only available for Linux machines. But what if you want to manage said VMs also via Windows 10? WSL2 to the rescue: Just install WSL2 as shown by the excellent Microsoft Guide<\/a>, install i.e. a Debian\/GNU Linux instance and then launch into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You should update the instance to the latest version first:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y && sudo apt dist-upgrade -y<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
then you can install virt-manager<\/p>\n\n\n\n
sudo apt install -y virt-manager ssh-askpass<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
the last thing you would need is to install an X server on your windows machine, i.e. Xming <\/a>or MobaXterm <\/a>(which contains Xming) and launch it. Then you need to setup the X forwarding in your WSL2 instance, by entering<\/p>\n\n\n\n
export DISPLAY=\"grep nameserver \/etc\/resolv.conf | sed 's\/nameserver \/\/':0\"
export DISPLAY=\"sed -n 's\/nameserver \/\/p' \/etc\/resolv.conf:0\"
export DISPLAY=$(ip route|awk '\/^default\/{print $3}'):0.0<\/code><\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
after that, you can launch virt-manager by entering<\/p>\n\n\n\n
virt-manager<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
and configure it to connect to your KVM instance via SSH.<\/p>\n