Make and manage copy-on-write KVM clones from template VMs
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Jesse Gardner 11863d942b Minor improvements to manual 1 year ago
LICENSE qq2clone V 0.1.0 2 years ago
README.md removed unneeded C style comment syntax in readme 2 years ago
gen_all.bash Fixed gen_all.bash bugs, changed style of installer script generation 2 years ago
lv_api_do Minor improvements to manual 1 year ago
lv_api_do.c GNU GPL copyright notices/license notices added 2 years ago
man.md Minor improvements to manual 1 year ago
man.pandoc Minor improvements to manual 1 year ago
qq2clone Minor improvements to manual 1 year ago
qq2clone.1 Minor improvements to manual 1 year ago
qq2clone_completion.bash GNU GPL copyright notices/license notices added 2 years ago
qq2clone_installer.bash Minor improvements to manual 1 year ago
qq2clone_installer_noarchive.bash Fixed gen_all.bash bugs, changed style of installer script generation 2 years ago
qq2clone_noarchive Line length (CPL) bumped to 80 2 years ago

README.md

README

qq2clone is a linux tool to simplify creating and managing copy-on-write clones of template QEMU/KVM virtual machines. It can perform batch operations in case you are working with multiple clones. There is a version of the manual page you can read online above (man.md).

qq2clone has these dependences:

  • virsh (qq2clone has started transitioning to use the libvirt API directly, this will not remain a dependency forever)
  • Bash 4.0+
  • sqlite3
  • xmllint (from libxml2)
  • qemu-img
  • libvirt tools:
    • virt-clone
    • virt-xml
    • virt-xml-validate

INSTALL

The file qq2clone_installer.bash is a setup script containing a self-extracting archive. If you copy and paste the following into a terminal, it will download and run.

curl  https://git.j-g-web.com/jesse/qq2clone/raw/branch/master/qq2clone_installer.bash > .qq2clone_installer.bash 2> /dev/null &&
chmod +x .qq2clone_installer.bash &&
./.qq2clone_installer.bash

FAQ

How do I use this thing?

The manual is quite detailed, and there is an examples section that may be helpful.

Why use Bash and C when this could all be written in Python?

Just to improve my Bash skills and gain a tiny bit of familiarity with C. Writing this in Python would certainly have been easier.

Permission issues when making a clone

Getting an error like "Template $VMNAME refers to /var/lib/libvirt/images/$VMNAME.qcow2, but the file cannot be read" ? This is because libvirt is configured with a default storage pool that you, as a non-root user are not allowed to read.

You can resolve this issue by moving the image associated with a virtual machine to a location your user can read, changing the ownership/permissions, and modifying the libvirt xml of the template to point at the new image location. To modify a template machine's XML, use qq2clone modify-template VMNAME edit. You will have to find the filepath of the virtual machine image in the XML and change it to point at the location you moved it to.

Copyright 2021, Jesse Gardner

All files present in the qq2clone git repository are released under the the GNU GPL v2 license. The following disclaimer is found in most files contained in this repository, and makes things more specific:

#------------------------------------------------------------------------#
# Copyright 2021, Jesse Gardner                                          #
#------------------------------------------------------------------------#
# This file is part of qq2clone.                                         #
#                                                                        #
# qq2clone is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify       #
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by   #
# the Free Software Foundation, either version 2 of the License, or      #
# (at your option) any later version.                                    #
#                                                                        #
# qq2clone is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,            #
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of         #
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the          #
# GNU General Public License for more details.                           #
#                                                                        #
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License      #
# along with qq2clone.  If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.     #
#------------------------------------------------------------------------#