Virt-manager
Virtual Machine Manager. Virt-manager is a graphical tool for managing virtual machines via libvirt.Most usage is with QEMU/KVM virtual machines, but Xen and libvirt LXC containers are well supported. Virt-manager is based on a set of lower level virtualization tools, going from the user interface to the hardware interactions with the processor. This terminology is a bit confusing and other documentation might mention the following tools: KVM is the module of the Linux kernel that interacts with the virtualization features of the processor.
You may have already read our other articles, such as our Kali Linux VirtualBox Pentest Lab, which details how you can use Virtualbox to set up your own lab. This is great if you’re a Windows/Mac user, and either don’t have the money or don’t want to pay for VMware’s virtualization solutions. Many of us, Linux users, can and do benefit from running VirtualBox to practice our pentesting and hacking skills.
However, with the new developments for us Debian users, we are now instructed to use Virtual Machine Manager (virt-manager) instead. So, today we’re going to give you a full guide on how you can create your own penetration testing lab with KVM, using virt-manager as a graphical UI to manage all our virtual machines
KVM stands for Kernel Virtual Machine, and it’s a Linux kernel module that provides full hypervisor capabilities; meaning it allows your system to run virtual machines. The main difference is that, if you’re a Linux user, then it comes already bundled with the kernel. The only restriction is that your computer’s
processor should contain hardware virtualization extensions (Intel-VT or AMD-V) to run KVM.
If these virtualization extensions are not present on your CPU, you don’t need to worry. You can still benefit from using virt-manager to manage virtual machines. You will however, experience a performance hit on your system. This is relatively uncommon on modern systems, but it is important to notice, just in case. For example, testing on a laptop with a 2nd-generation Intel i5, it runs KVM perfectly. Meanwhile, another computer with a Core 2 Duo processor does not run KVM. It can, of course, run virt-manager, but the performance sadly isn’t the same as the one with the i5 CPU.
To check if your processor comes with hardware virtualization extensions, just type:
As you can see, on this computer, which has an AMD Phenom II processor, which comes with the AMD-V hardware extension enabled.
Now, since we’re on Debian, we’re going to need the qemu-kvm package, which is the KVM-ready version of the QEMU system emulator. For extra configuration convenience, we’re going to also install libvirt-daemon-system along with the virt-manager, which is a tool that
will help us manage all of our VMs from a Graphical User Interface (GUI).
Now that we have everything installed, we can download our virtual machines. We’re going to create our Virtual Machines. For this example, we will be downloading the latest Kali ISO image, along with the Metasploitable2 virtual machine.
Once downloaded, we need to open up a terminal in the directory where we just downloaded them.
Upon listing the contents, we can use the unzip command to extract the Metasploitable2 virtual machine’s files.
We are now ready to run virt-manager for the first time. Here, we should be asked to enter our password.
To skip having to re-enter your password again and again, you can add your user to the sudo group, the group name may vary depending on your distribution, but in Debian the group is called sudo. Also, you’ll need to become root. So, for user hl:
Upon which, we need to log out and log back in, so that our user is recognized as member of the sudo group.
You can then open virt-manager. To create a new virtual machine, you can go to File → New virtual machine or just click on the New button below the File menu entry, like so.
The New VM window will appear. In my case, since my Debian “host” system was running as a VM, virt-manager was letting me know KVM was not available for me. If I were running it on my actual host OS, this alert does not appear. Select the Import existing disk image option and press Forward.
Next, you’ll need to browse your system’s storage to select the disk image for the Metasploitable VM. Press Browse search for the storage volume.
The window that appears displays 2 sections. The left side shows the different storage pools from which you can select your image. The right side lists all storage volumes contained in the selected storage pool. Since the current default pool is empty, we can press Browse Local to open other directories to use as storage pools.
You will now need to locate the Metasploitable2.vmdk file we just extracted.
Next, we are required to select the operating system we’re installing. For demonstration purposes, I went with Generic. However, you can choose several of the major distros, just begin typing their name and the list should pop up, as seen here when I selected Generic:
Note: If you get a message saying the emulator may not have permissions for the path where the disc image is located, asking if you want to correct it, you’ll need to click on Yes to be able to continue. Press forward when ready.
We are now required to choose the Memory and CPU settings for the VM. To ensure we’re using the same settings from the OVA, do the following:
- Open up a terminal
- Navigate to the directory with the extracted contents of the OVA
- Look at the .vmx file’s contents (e.g. using cat)
When looking into the contents of the file, pay close attention to the memsize and numvcpus values; as we’ll need to enter those into the Memory and CPU settings fields for the emulator. Press Forward afterwards.
On the final configuration stage, we’ll need to Name the new VM. We will name it Metasploitable2 and check the Customize configuration before install option.
If you expand the Network selection section below, you’ll be shown all different networking options available for this VM. For security purposes, mainly with Metasploitable, we’re going to use NAT. Once the network has been selected, press Finish.
If this is the very first time you use a VM, you’ll be notified that the current network is inactive. Press Yes to activate it.
If, after that, you get an error message like the one below, you will need to modify the Connection Details, as we will demonstrate in a bit.
However, just so we don’t need to re-create the virtual machine all over again, we can simply select a macvtap interface and bridge it to the Ethernet interface, and press Finish afterwards.
The next window will allow you to verify and customize the virtual machine’s configuration before it is installed. Feel free to check its setting and, when ready, press Begin Installation.
You’ll see a message notifying that Virtual Machine Manager wants to inhibit shortcuts. Feel free to allow it, and notice it says that you can restore them by pressing Shift+Escape.
The virtual machine will start, but it won’t have network access. So, once it’s loaded the OS, you’ll need to log in with user/password msfadmin / msfadmin and then enter the command sudo poweroff to power off the VM.
We can now go ahead and fix the connection settings to enable the NAT network for our virtual machines.
First, click the QEMU/KVM header on the Virtual Machine Manager window, and then go to Edit → Connection Details.
You’ll notice that, even though the network is set to be enabled on boot, its status is Inactive.
Based on some of our testing, the best alternative is to create a new network, which we’ll configure with NAT settings. To create it, click the + button on the bottom left of the window.
Virt-manager Aur
You’ll be prompted to enter the name for the network (we named it NAT), and press Forward. Next, you’ll need to configure the IPv4 address space for the new virtual network. Note that we changed to the lighter colors cheme, just so that you could see the settings better.
Feel free to review the automatically generated settings and modify them as needed, then press Forward. Jumpstart and wps pin.
You will then be asked if you want to enable IPv6 on this network. We, at least, didn’t enable it; but you sure can. Press Forward for the next step.
The final screen allows us to configure how our virtual network will be connected. Here we’ve selected to have it be a NAT that forwards traffic to the outside network, by connecting to any physical device.
If you want to have it forward traffic to a specific interface, feel free to do so by changing the Destination, as shown below. Press Finish once you’re done.
Following this, we need to clean up by deleting the faulty network. Best rotation helper addon wow. To do so, highlight its name and press the Delete network button at the bottom of the window.
Press Yes when asked if you’re sure about wanting to delete the network default.
Next, stop the NAT network by pressing the corresponding button at the bottom.
You may now give the network any name you want. We decided to name it default. Once you’re done, press the Apply button on the bottom right corner of the window.
You can start the network by pressing the ‘Play’ button on the bottom.
Then, to ensure the virtual network is enabled from system boot-up, you’ll need to enable the Autostart: On boot parameter, and press Apply afterwards.
We now need to modify the Metasploitable2 virtual machine’s settings and change network card from macvtap to the new NAT network we created.
To do so, double-click the name of the VM on the main Virtual Machine Manager window and press the light bulb icon. The virtual machine’s settings are shown.
On the left-hand column, locate the NIC setting (this is your network interface card).
We will modify the Network source field and select the ‘default’ network, which we just configured as NAT. Remember to press Apply afterwards.
You may close this window afterwards, or boot the VM to double-check its IP address and network connectivity, as you prefer.
Now that we’re done installing the Metasploitable2 virtual machine, we can now proceed to create another one, where we will install Kali Linux.
The main difference is that, first and foremost, the virtual network is working properly, so we don’t need to fiddle with that anymore.
Second, since we downloaded the Kali Linux ISO image, we will select the Local install media (ISO image or CDROM) option when creating it.
Next, you will need to browse for the Kali Linux ISO file. For us, it was in the Downloads/ pool, but you can always choose the Browse Local option if it’s not displayed in any of the current storage pools.
For Kali, you may select either Debian 10 or Debian Testing on the operating system type field.
We assigned 2 GB of RAM for our Kali virtual machine, which could be considered a sufficient minimum, but you can assin more as needed.
We went with the default disk size of 20.0 GB for the virtual hard drive. However, we got an error, telling us that there was no space left on the default storage pool.
We tried going with 8 GB disk size, but got the same error.
However, we noticed the reason was that it only had less than 3 GB of space left on the root (/) partition.
We knew our /home directory was in a different disk partition and that we had more space available there. So, if by any chance you get the same error, we’ll show you how to create a new storage pool on that partition.
Create a storage pool
You must first choose the Select or create custom storage option, and press the Manage button.
To create the new pool, we have to press the + button on the bottom left corner.
Here, we will provide a name for the new storage pool. For this example, it will be named VMs.
When asked for a path for the new storage pool, press Browse.
Here we will create a new folder, called VMs as well.
Open the newly-created folder; and then click the Open button.
To finish creating the storage pool, press Finish.
Create the new storage volume
Once the new storage pool has been created, we can now create the virtual disk for our Kali VM. First, press on the + button on the right side.
Here, you can customize the virtual disk settings for our Kali installation. We named ours Kali and used the .qcow format, which is the default. For this example, we configured ours to be 8 GB in size, but you can customize it as you like. Press Finish once you’re done.
Notice that it no appears in the Volumes list for the VMs storage pool. Select it, and press Choose Volume.
You’ll be back on the previous window, where you’ll see that the name of the new virtual disk has been entered into the Select or create custom storage field. Press Forward to continue.
Pre-Install setup
The final screen will give you some options for configuring the VM, the first of which is to give it a name. Logically, we named ours Kali.
You’re going to want to mark the Customize the configuration before install checkbox, and also to double-check the virtual network options that are available. Press Finish once you’re OK with the settings.
Now, just like with Metasploitable VM, you’ll be able to double-check all the settings before beginning the installation process. Pay special care to the Boot options, as we want to make sure the machine will boot from the CD-ROM; so mark the CD-ROM checkbox and, if you wish, Enable boot menu. While highlighting the CD-ROM boot option, you can press the Up arrow button to make it be the first boot option. To ensure any changes you’ve made are saved, make sure to click on the Apply button on the bottom right corner.
Once you’re satisfied with the configuration options, press the Begin Installation button on the top-left corner of the window.
The virtual machine will boot up and, again, you’ll be alerted that virt-manager wants to disable shortcuts. Feel free to Allow such behavior.
From here on, you may either continue with the Kali installer as you regularly would, or boot Kali as a Live CD; the choice is yours.
Finally, here’s a screenshot of the end result, with both Kali and Metasploitable2 VMs; both running on KVM, via the virt-manager management interface.
Willing to give this a try? Are you interested in learning more about href{virtualization in Linux}{virtualization}? Make sure to read more of our articles on the topic, and let us know in the comments below!
In the comments of our recent GhostBSD review, reader Enduzzer casually mentioned trying out the distribution in a Gnome Boxes VM. Linux's Kernel Virtual Machine has been a mainstay of my own system administration for more than a decade—but I use virt-manager, an excellent and deeply sysadmin-ish graphical management interface.I generally describe virt-manager as 'simple'—and in many ways it's much simpler than Boxes is—but there are different ways to interpret simplicity.
The integrated approach
Under the hood, Boxes shares the majority of its technical underpinnings with virt-manager: the libvirt virtualization API, the Linux Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor, and the qemu generic processor emulator. Virt-manager exposes those inner workings as much as possible while trying not to get them unnecessarily in the way.
Virt-manager Cpu Configuration
Boxes approaches the same problem from the opposite direction—it abstracts away as much as possible, with no apologies for doing so.
Boxes [..] is targeted towards a typical desktop end-user who wants either a very safe and easy way to try out new operating systems or new (potentially unstable) versions of her/his favorite operating system(s), or needs to connect to a remote machine (home-office connection being a typical use-case). For this reason, Boxes does not provide many of the advanced options to tweak virtual machines provided by virt-manager. Instead, Boxes focuses on getting things working out of the box with very little input from user.
This desktop-focused approach may begin with trimming away advanced options, but it doesn't end there—Boxes offers quite a few usability tweaks that virt-manager doesn't, and likely won't. This effort at greater integration begins before a new virtual machine is even running. Most popular—and even not-so-popular—guest operating systems are available in Boxes as a built-in download direct from the source. Instead of needing to google 'OpenBSD' to find a download link, a Boxes user can just start typing 'open' into a search field and immediately see a list of OpenSUSE and OpenBSD versions.
The extra integration is most evident when running Linux guests (virtual machines), where virtio drivers are always available and libvirt integration is at a maximum. When we tested an Ubuntu Focal Fossa guest, the guest's video resolution changed dynamically and automatically as we resized its window on the host operating system—and files dragged from the host's file explorer onto the Boxes window were automatically transferred into the guest, where they showed up in the logged-in user's Downloads folder.
Easy mode isn't necessarily easier
Although I led with a good experience above, the Ubuntu Focal guest wasn't actually the first thing I tried. Boxes specifically aims to give inexperienced users 'a very safe and easy way to try out new operating systems'—so that's just what I did, shooting for the moon with an OpenBSD install attempt on my first try.
AdvertisementSearching for OpenBSD under the Create VM dialog went extremely well—as I typed 'open' into the search box, it dynamically populated the list of known distros with matching results. I skipped down past OpenSUSE and went directly to OpenBSD, which I'd never run before. This seemed to go well at first—it downloaded the ISO quickly, and jumped right into an installation—but the installation itself had severe problems, and I never got a working guest out of it.
OpenBSD's installer is quite primitive and couldn't cope with some of the choices Boxes had made for its environment. It couldn't successfully find its own files on the virtual CD it had booted from, it didn't quite understand the network stack (interpreting its IP address as static rather than DHCP), and it had incredibly bad keybounce. (If you had to click that link to figure out what keybounce is, I don't blame you.)
By contrast, OpenBSD installed without a hitch under virt-manager. Although I did need to download an OpenBSD 6.6 ISO manually and point virt-manager to it—and select the number of vCPUs as well as how much RAM and disk space to allocate—the actual install there went flawlessly. In less than five minutes total, virt-manager delivered a working OpenBSD guest without so much as a hiccup.
Brittle installation environment aside, Boxes will probably frustrate fellow KVM veterans immensely. Boxes guests need extra steps to be managed or inspected with the usual libvirt-related commands—you won't see a running Boxes guest under virt-top, virsh list, or similar tools by default.
If you want to manage Boxes guests with standad tools, you must connect separately to qemu:///session (which runs under the logged-in user context) instead of qemu:///system (which runs under the global system context—typically a dedicated user account like libvirt-qemu).
Be warned, simply displaying a VM in virt-manager doesn't keep Boxes from messing with it—for example, a few moments after I popped a virt-manager console window to my Focal guest, Boxes 'helpfully' paused the VM, since Boxes no longer had focus.
The papercuts continue
OpenBSD problems aside, Boxes was pretty painful even with better-supported guests. It automatically hibernated my Ubuntu Focal Fossa VM when I closed the main Boxes window—and when I tried to open Boxes again, the entire application timed out waiting for the Fossa guest to reboot. I had to click Boxes from the launcher a second time, several seconds later, before anything visible happened at all.
Presumably, the idea here is to make it less likely for a very inexperienced user to waste system resources on entirely idle VMs. There's a Run in backgroundoption in the VM's Properties dialog that should prevent the automatic hibernation—but that dialog is dangerous even to look at. The content of Properties is taller than the dialog itself, necessitating vertical scrolling.
Scrolling down the guest Properties dialog with the mouse-wheel works—until that scrolling places the Memory or Maximum Disk Size slider under your mouse cursor. At that point, the focus suddenly shifts—and you're suddenly resizing your guest's RAM or hard drive. Yikes.
A quick look at virt-manager
Virt-manager doesn't offer all the fancy download or desktop integration features Boxes does—but it's considerably more capable and reliable.
A virt-manager VM won't automatically hibernate itself when its console window is closed. It also won't resize its desktop resolution to fit the window, or automatically feed a dropped file into a magic download. Seen from a sysadmin's perspective, this lack is a feature, not a bug—it means that the guest is properly isolated, exposing it and the host to the minimum of weirdness (let alone security problems) from one another.
Virt-manager also offers nearly effortless administration of multiple physical VM hosts. The view you see in the gallery above gives you some idea—in addition to the two hosts running in my home network, sharp eyes can spot five more hosts with hostnames ending in .wg, which in my case means they're on the other side of a WireGuard tunnel.
A single virt-manager instance on a workstation can easily manage tens or even hundreds of separate hosts, connected by SSH tunnels using shared-key authentication. A double-click pops a graphical console window into the local or remote VM, using either Spice or VNC as the remote-control protocol.
In the toolbar of a virt-manager console window, a simple set of start, pause, and power icons do exactly that—another offers the ability to create and manage snapshots (which Boxes failed at), and the Info button gives access to inspect and modify the VM's virtual hardware and related settings.
Conclusions
I like the idea of Boxes, and I think there's a definite market for it. The allure of incredibly safe, simple, and easy distro-hopping isn't lost on me—and I particularly liked the integrated download mechanism.
Unfortunately, I don't think Boxes is ready for prime time yet. The number of sharp edges I encountered even with a very modern Linux guest OS running a Gnome3 desktop outweighed Boxes' simplicity—let alone the completely broken install environment for OpenBSD, as compared to a 'just works' experience on virt-manager.
Virt-manager
The good
- Easy, dynamic search of available distros to install and play with
- Dynamic resolution changes to fit host window
- Simple drag-and-drop operations to get files from host to guest—if the desktop environment in the guest supports it
The bad
- Extreme lack of configurability
- Broken environments in distros that 'just work' on virt-manager
- Broken QEMU snapshot management
- Default allocation of all host CPU threads to the guest
- Lack of discoverability—where are the downloaded ISOs? Where are the guests' virtual drives?
The ugly
- Focus-stealing, mouse-wheel resizing of the guest hard disk—what?!
- Apparently broken re-launching due to guest hibernation
- No visibility to standard libvirt tools like
virsh,virt-top, orvirt-manager - Buggy, odd ambiguation of normal remote control with guest management—trying to be too many things to too many people
- Easy mode needs to be easy, and at version 3.36 and counting, Boxes just isn't there yet.
Virt-manager Create Virtual Network
Descargar kingdom rush para pc windows 7. Listing image by Jim Salter