[libvirt-users] Libvirt with virtualbox

[Dawid Zamirski]

On Fri, 23 May 2014 18:34:33 +0200, Dr. Boris Neubert wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> has anyone of you successfully used libvirt with VirtualBox? I ask
> because I haven't managed to connect to my machines and would like to
> benefit from your experience.
> 
> Cheers Boris

Hi,

Yes, I've been using VirtualBox-4.3.10 with libvirt-1.2.3 quite 
successfully, though it took me a while to figure out how to work with it:

1. There are two ways to connect:
   a) vbox:///system - this connects to vbox running as root which is 
rarely the case for usual vbox installations.
   b) vbox:///session - connects to vbox running as current user (this is 
most likely what you will want to do)

2. While I could list, shutdown etc running VMs, I could not start any 
with default configuration - start VM would just freeze as for some 
reason it cannot initialize VBox GUI. To solve this:
    a) redefine VM to start in headless mode and use RDP as your display  
instead. To do so make sure VMs XML graphics settings are as below:

<driver>
    <graphics type="rdp" autoport="yes">
</driver>

Make sure that there's NO <graphics type="desktop"> in there as this is 
what attempts to start VBox GUI.

    b) start VBox GUI first, and the libvirt should be able to start VMs 
fine.

Regards,
Dawid Zamirski