These are just some notes I was keeping around for installing a KVM machine that can be used as a template for creating new KVM instances.

I’m using KVM as a hypervisor and LVM volumes for the VM machines, and the Operating System being used is Debian.

For more information on setting up KVM on Debian, please check the Debian KVM Wiki page

Login to the KVM hypervisor

Download the system’s ISO you will be using as a template and place it in a word-readable directory.

I have used a Debian Squeeze ISO image for this purpose to create my own Squeeze template system.

Create a logical volume for the virtual machine

All virtual machines are installed inside an LVM volume, so first we need to create a new volume for the machine, e.g.:

$ sudo lvcreate -L10G -n debian-squeeze vg0

Create the new virtual machine

Now we can start the installation of the new template system.

The below command would create a new system called debian-squeeze with 1024 Mb of memory and 1 virtual cpu. A VNC session will be created as well for the new system, so that you can follow the install process.

Below is an example command used while installing a Debian Squeeze system as a template:

$ sudo virt-install --connect qemu:///system -n debian-squeeze \
       -r 1024 --vcpus=1 --disk path=/dev/mapper/vg0-debian-squeeze \
       -c /isos/debian-squeeze.iso --vnc --noautoconsole \
       --os-type linux --os-variant debiansqueeze \
       --network=bridge:br0 --hvm

Complete the OS installation

A VNC session will be created for you listening on localhost:port. In order to get the port check the last created qemu process which includes the port of the VNC session as well.

In order to connect to the VNC session, create an SSH tunnel to the hypervisor and use a VNC client.

Example command would look like this if our new template system is listening on port 5924 for incoming VNC sessions.

$ ssh -L 5924:localhost:5924 hv01.example.org
$ vncviewer localhot:5924

Complete the OS installation, install a basic set of required packages and set root password.

Minimum set of required packages

These below are the minimum set of required packages for all template system:

• sudo
• cfengine3
• emacs

Of course, you can install your own package set well :)

Post-install actions

Once the new template system has been installed and fully configured we need to perform a few post-install actions.

That includes shutting down the new system and preparing it for cloning.

First, shutdown the template system:

$ sudo virsh
virsh# shutdown debian-squeeze

Now, we need to prepare the system for cloning, which means removing any persistent udev entries for network configurations and others as well.

Below is an example command used for preparing the debian-squeeze template machine.

$ sudo virt-sysprep --enable=cron-spool,dhcp-client-state,dhcp-server-state,logfiles,mail-spool,net-hwaddr,rhn-systemid,ssh-hostkeys,udev-persistent-net,utmp,yum-uuid -d debian-squeeze

One last thing that remains to be done is to mark the VM, so that it does not start during boot-time.

$ sudo virsh
virsh# autostart --disable debian-squeeze

NOTE: After every change you do on the template system you need to run the above command, so that the system is prepared for cloning.

Once that is done you can start cloning the template machine and create new systems.

See this blog post about cloning a template system in order to see how you can clone your template system and spawn new instances in KVM.