Is there a virt-manager alternative for Mac OS X? [closed]

It is common that programmers will need to interface with virtual-machines in their day-to-day workflows, and one popular way of doing so on Linux and Windows systems is with virt-manager.

Is their a way to get virt-manager or a similar alternative running on a MacOS machine?

Solution 1:

There's now a brew formula homebrew-virt-manager which I've used to successfully connect to a CentOS 5 box running qemu+kvm.

brew tap jeffreywildman/homebrew-virt-manager
brew install virt-manager virt-viewer
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/python /usr/bin/python2
virt-manager -c qemu+ssh://user@libvirthost/system?socket=/var/run/libvirt/libvirt-sock

Solution 2:

sadly no, you can however install virt-manager on a linux box and run it on your mac desktop through vnc and X11.

what you need to do is start X11, open xterm (command + N), type ssh -X user@linux-box, then type virt-manager once logged on.

Solution 3:

Same problem here, tried several solutions and workarounds, and found that for managing virtual machines on a remote Qemu/KVM server nothing is as reliable and comfortable than a GNU/Linux system running virt-manager.

Our best solution so far is to install Virtualbox in MacOS to run a Lubuntu LTS system with virt-manager.

We found Lubuntu excellent for this purpose: it just works, it's easy to use and requires few resources to run (it can use less than 300 MB of RAM to run virt-manager and 3-4 SPICE clients). You can save this Virtualbox machine state when you don't need it, and restore it in a few seconds when needed.

Moreover, there's irony in running a virtual machine locally to manage remote virtual machines! :-)

Update

Someone prepared a vagrantfile to quickly setup an Ubuntu virtual machine and run virt-manager via ssh. See:

https://st-g.de/2016/08/virt-manager-in-vagrant

Solution 4:

AFAIK no, but you can use it alright if you do this:

1. install (in the host) the NoMachine NX server
2. install the NX client on your mac
3. login from the mac
4. fix the keyboard issues following these instructions
5. open virt-manager in the gnome session in your server/host (that you are using via the NX client)
6. have fun