If you’ve seen the blog post about creating a template for KVM virtual machines then you probably were wondering how to actually clone an already existing template system.

Well, this blog post is exactly about this - how you can clone an existing KVM template system and spawn new instances.

Login to the hypervisor

Create a logical volume first for the new virtual machine.

Below is an example command which creates a new LVM volume called www-proxy, from the vg0 volume group, which we’ll use to install the Varnish HTTP Accelerator.

$ sudo lvcreate -L10G -n www-proxy vg0

Next we clone the system from an existing template.

Below is an example command which creates the www-proxy virtual machine using the debian-squeeze template system:

$ sudo virt-clone --original debian-squeeze --name www-proxy --file /dev/mapper/vg0-www-proxy

Wait for the clone to be completed and then proceed to the next steps.

Post-clone actions

First, we need to start up the newly created machine and perform some post-clone actions.

Login to the hypervisor and start up the new system.

$ sudo virsh
virsh# start www-proxy

You can watch the system booting by executing the console www-proxy command.

Once the system boots up, login to it and do the post-clone steps listed below.

• Update /etc/hosts
• Update network interfaces
• Set hostname
• Create ssh keys for the host

For creating the server’s SSH keys execute the commands below:

$ sudo ssh-keygen -t rsa -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key
$ sudo ssh-keygen -t dsa -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key
$ sudo ssh-keygen -t ecdsa -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ecdsa_key

• Create the atjobs directory needed for running atd(8):

This is needed because during the preparation of the template system (via virt-sysprep(8)) the atjobs directory is being removed.

$ sudo mkdir /var/spool/cron/atjobs

• Create the /var/log/wtmp file to store login information

To create the file, simply touch(1) it:

$ sudo touch /var/log/wtmp

One last thing that remains to be done is to autostart the system during boot-time. To do that, execute the command below from the virsh(1) console:

virsh# autostart www-proxy

Once ready, reboot the system and you are good to go.