slackbuilds/libvirt/build

libvirt - The virtualization API



libvirt is a toolkit to interact with the virtualization

capabilities of recent versions of Linux (and other OSes).



Most optional dependencies are autodetected and having the required

libs in place will build the respective features automatically.



The group can be specified at build time like this:

VIRTGROUP=somegroup ./libvirt.SlackBuild (default: users)

You'll want to keep this in sync with what qemu uses (it also

defaults to the "users" group).



If you want to start the libvirt daemon at boot, add this

to /etc/rc.d/rc.local



  # Start libvirt:

  if [ -x /etc/rc.d/rc.libvirt ]; then

    /etc/rc.d/rc.libvirt start

  fi



and if you want it to stop at shutdown add this to

/etc/rc.d/rc.local_shutdown



  # Stop libvirt:

  if [ -x /etc/rc.d/rc.libvirt ]; then

    /etc/rc.d/rc.libvirt stop

  fi



The enclosed rc.libvirt script will do a 'managedsave' on all running 

and paused guests when issuing 'rc.libvirt stop'. Please note that this 

saves the RAM of each guest to the host system's disk (by default under 

/var/lib/libvirt/qemu/save) - so make sure enough space is available. If 

you prefer to perform a full shutdown on all running guests instead, 

issue a 'rc.libvirt guests_shutdown' followed by 'rc.libvirt shutdown'.



By default 'rc.libvirt stop' and 'rc.libvirt guests_shutdown' will wait 

a maximum of 5 minutes for all guests to shutdown, after which any 

guests still running will be destroyed. Adjust this to a suitable value 

for your system, as destroying a running guest carries a high risk of 

data loss!



There is also a 'guests_reboot' for rebooting all running guests.



Have a look at the commented part of rc.libvirt for some gotchas.



netcat-openbsd is an optional dependency (needed if you

want to connect from a remote host using virt-manager).

Other optional dependencies include avahi, xen, audit, glusterfs,

numactl, open-iscsi and libiscsi.



As of the 4.5.0 version, you may have to remove any previously 

installed versions of libvirt before this will build.



Note also that sometimes, in consequence of a major-version upgrade,

you might discover that the libvirt configuration is in an inconsistent

state (machine networking broken and so on) and when this happens and a

simple reboot won't solve you might want to consider starting from a

clean state. To do this:

- backup the existing vms files and their configurations too (with

  "virsh dumpxml $name > ${name}.xml", check all the *dumpxml commands

  available with "virsh help")

- remove libvirt

- delete all the system directories (/var/lib/libvirt, /var/log/libvirt,

  /etc/libvirt)

- install the new libvirt package, logout and login again (might help)

  and start the daemon

- recreate your configurations (network and so on)

- reimport the vms xml backups (with "virsh define ${name}.xml")