Installing KVM on a Linux Machine

Steps:

1. Check if the Linux machine supports virtualization. To check, launch a command line terminal and execute the command egrep '(vmx|svm)' /proc/cpuinfo.

   • If virtualization is disabled, you can enable it in the server BIOS.

   • If the machine does not support virtualization, then you cannot install KVM.

2. Install QEMU, libvirt, and their supporting utilities by issuing the command yum install -y qemu-kvm qemu-img virt-manager libvirt libvirt-python libvirt-client virt-install virt-viewer bridge-utils dejavu-lgc-sans-fonts.

3. In order to start using libvirt utilities such as virt-manager, you will first need to enable and start libvirt.

   1. To enable libvirt, execute the command systemctl enable libvirtd.

   2. Once you enable the application, start it by issuing the command systemctl start libvirtd.

   3. To check if the application has successfully started, execute the command systemctl status libvirtd.

4. To check if KVM is successfully installed on the system, execute the command lsmod | grep -i kvm.

5. Verify that the QEMU hypervisor is running with the latest version using the command virsh -c qemu:///system version --daemon.

   You should see output similar to this:

   Compiled against library: libvirt 4.5.0

   Using library: libvirt 4.5.0

   Using API: QEMU 4.5.0

   Running hypervisor: QEMU 2.12.0

   Running against daemon: 4.5.0