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Show HN: Lightweight tool for managing Linux virtual machines

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Show HN: Lightweight tool for managing Linux virtual machines

#1

Post by ccheshirecat »

hey guys. the other day i was migrating hosting providers and i just needed something not too heavy and convenient to spin up my backups for awhile and realised there is almost nothing out there. kimchi hasn't been updated for years and cockpit is heavy. so here's something i came up with in a couple hours because of a sudden urge, nothing fancy just basic creation with cloud init, lifecycle management and image/storage, but it's modern-ish and it compiles to a 8.4mb binary inclusive of the embedded web UI, CLI and API, and only dep is libvirt.

Show HN: Lightweight tool for managing Linux virtual machines
github.com

Re: Show HN: Lightweight tool for managing Linux virtual machines

#2

Post by k_bx »

While I am using cockpit every time I need to remotely manage the machines, I couldn't get it to log me in via something other than user's login/password, which are not that safe, and it listens to 0.0.0.0 by default too.

So I have to ssh into machine, start cockpit service, use it, and then stop the cockpit.socket once I finish.

Would be great to have something which has its own users/passwords (to have strong password in bitwarden) and doesn't listen to 0.0.0.0 by default. If it's also lightweight – even better!

Re: Show HN: Lightweight tool for managing Linux virtual machines

#3

Post by 0x073 »

k_bx wrote: post #2

While I am using cockpit every time I need to remotely manage the machines, I couldn't get it to log me in via something other than user's login/password, which are not that safe, and it listens to 0.0.0.0 by default too. So I have to ssh into machine, start cockpit service, use it, and then stop the cockpit.socket once I finish. Would be great to have something which has its own users/passwords (to have strong passw…

I thought cockpit use pam, so you can use other pam modules to log in.

Re: Show HN: Lightweight tool for managing Linux virtual machines

#4

Post by lioeters »

I like the sound of it, especially the compact single-file executable with minimal dependency. Forgive me for my ignorance, I may not fit the target user profile - I'm not familiar with KVM, and have only occasionally used QEMU. I read briefly about Cloud Init when setting up Multipass for creating new Ubuntu VMs.

What is KVM? - https://www.redhat.com/en/topics/virtualization/what-is-KVM

Can this tool `flint` replace some uses of Docker? I'm curious if I can use it for local development purpose, or for running stuff in production like isolating applications.

  flint launch [image-name]

  Launch a new VM with smart defaults. Supports launching from images or templates.
Is there a registry of images, like OS versions? Or maybe it's more decentralized than that. It also sounds related to OCI (Open Container Initiative) format that Podman supports, and qcow2 images for QEMU.

Could you give a brief summary of what this tool enables, for a potential user who doesn't know much about KVM?

Re: Show HN: Lightweight tool for managing Linux virtual machines

#6

Post by imiric »

Hey, thanks for sharing. As someone who uses QEMU via rudimentary shell scripts, this looks interesting.

Unfortunately, I'm reluctant to trust a 26KLOC vibe-coded app[1] for something like this, so I'll pass.

But if a polished React/Next.js app, with a CLI, HTTP/WebSocket API, authentication, and libvirt integration, truly took you a couple of hours to produce, and it solves your problem, that's a commendable achievement. I'm not sure if I should be praising you or the LLM, but it's notable nonetheless.

[1]: https://github.com/ccheshirecat/flint/commit/eb90847db9da56c...

Re: Show HN: Lightweight tool for managing Linux virtual machines

#7

Post by dangus »

imiric wrote: post #6

Hey, thanks for sharing. As someone who uses QEMU via rudimentary shell scripts, this looks interesting. Unfortunately, I'm reluctant to trust a 26KLOC vibe-coded app[1] for something like this, so I'll pass. But if a polished React/Next.js app, with a CLI, HTTP/WebSocket API, authentication, and libvirt integration, truly took you a couple of hours to produce, and it solves your problem, that's a commendable achieve…

It seems to me that in use cases like this, reliability and stability is so much more important than a nice lightweight UI.

This project advertises a small single binary but that’s really a feature of Go, and the small size is a feature of the fact that this is a rushed vibecoded app.

A typical HomeLab user (mentioned in this project as one of the primary audiences) is probably using something like Proxmox because it’s exactly it’s been around for years and years, it’s developed by a professional team, it’s relatively easy to use, and it’s feature-rich.

And oh, by the way, Proxmox is free as in beer.

Re: Show HN: Lightweight tool for managing Linux virtual machines

#9

Post by TacticalCoder »

dangus wrote: post #7
imiric wrote: post #6

Hey, thanks for sharing. As someone who uses QEMU via rudimentary shell scripts, this looks interesting. Unfortunately, I'm reluctant to trust a 26KLOC vibe-coded app[1] for something like this, so I'll pass. But if a polished React/Next.js app, with a CLI, HTTP/WebSocket API, authentication, and libvirt integration, truly took you a couple of hours to produce, and it solves your problem, that's a commendable achieve…

It seems to me that in use cases like this, reliability and stability is so much more important than a nice lightweight UI. This project advertises a small single binary but that’s really a feature of Go, and the small size is a feature of the fact that this is a rushed vibecoded app. A typical HomeLab user (mentioned in this project as one of the primary audiences) is probably using something like Proxmox because it…

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