I never got into Vagrant but "lima" has worked well for spinning up (temporary) VM's quick: https://lima-vm.io/
There's plenty of images for different distributions, automatic file sharing between host and guest, etc.
Ditching Vagrant: VMs with KVM and Virsh on Debian
21–30 of 49 posts
Re: Ditching Vagrant: VMs with KVM and Virsh on Debian
#22This is the first time in my entire life I've ever seen someone use a Plan 9 formatted disk. Deep respect.
I might be wrong since it has been a long time since i used WSL, but i think that WSL2 uses 9P for mounting between the VM and the host.
Re: Ditching Vagrant: VMs with KVM and Virsh on Debian
#23This is the first time in my entire life I've ever seen someone use a Plan 9 formatted disk. Deep respect.
9P is a filesystem protocol (like NFS or CIFS) rather than a local file system (like btrfs or NTFS). It's used to share files between the host and the guest. That way there's no need to copy files between the host and the guest.
Re: Ditching Vagrant: VMs with KVM and Virsh on Debian
#24Honestly though... why not just systemd containers with minimal mounts, and if you're needing an ip, what not an unprivledged LXC container? The surface area is far smaller and they're way easier to inspect.
Re: Ditching Vagrant: VMs with KVM and Virsh on Debian
#25vagrant, docker, qemu, lxc, libvirt, incus, proxmox, nixos, guix, incusos, talos, microVMs, distrobox, packer, distrobuilder, ansible, terraform, cloud-init... Just crazy layers of choice and combinations
I am trying vanilla qemu with cloud-init. Images: https://images.linuxcontainers.org/images/
Re: Ditching Vagrant: VMs with KVM and Virsh on Debian
#26Most of my vagrant usage is from when a coworker has set up a vagrant file for a project.
Re: Ditching Vagrant: VMs with KVM and Virsh on Debian
#27For many use cases you'll do fine without the libvirt tower of babel, with just the qemu/kvm cli.
Re: Ditching Vagrant: VMs with KVM and Virsh on Debian
#28There used to be virt-manager Wonder if it’s still around ? Hope it’s doing well !
It's usable (?) as a toy: numerous gui inconsistencies and lack of security isolation [0]. Can't say whether the of lack funding (move to Cockpit from Red Hat) is the reason, or maintainer is just an obstructionist (strictest feature policy). [0] https://github.com/virt-manager/virt-manager/issues/358
That is infuriating to read. I have been using virt-manager and sleeping soundly that it was a secure isolation level.
VM guests should be considered trusted? Are you kidding me? That’s my number one usage -to operate software I do not trust.
Re: Ditching Vagrant: VMs with KVM and Virsh on Debian
#29There used to be virt-manager Wonder if it’s still around ? Hope it’s doing well !
I use it multiple times a day, and it's great! It doesn't try to hide details from you, but it does put a well-thought out GUI in front so you don't have to stumble around. It's not perfect, does take some getting used to, but it's stable and relatively comprehensive. I love it. Caveat: I'm mainly using it for home usage in my home lab.
I also love that I can drop to the CLI easily for scripts and it plays perfectly well with virt-manager, and it can be used easily over SSH to manage VMs on a remote host (which is key to my use case).
Re: Ditching Vagrant: VMs with KVM and Virsh on Debian
#30Mama, what a read! Nice work! Same story on macos: recently ditched the big (corpulent, distended, ossified) vagrant + virtualbox _repositories_ for some spritely lima + apple virtualization framework scripts, and been happier for it.
It was a forklift, to be sure, but the machines're snappier, & you buy yourself a little headroom.