Bootstrap Debian VM with virt-install

 Posted on 2020-07-30  |  2 min  |  227 words

Installing a small Debian VM from scratch with only one partition. Makes later resizing easier. This was done on Fedora 32.

Preparations

Install software

libvirt is already installed on Fedora 32. It’s used in Gnome Boxes. We will not use that for this. We’ll do it the old fashioned way with virt-install.

sudo dnf install -y virt-manager virt-install

User access to libvirt

Add your user to the group libvirt.

sudo usermod -aG libvirtd $USER

Installation

  1. Create a default preseed.cfg file. It contain a random root password for this installation. We change the installation to be atomic layout, just one big partition. This file can be reused to your hearts desire.

    osinfo-install-script -p jeos debian10
sed -i 's/home/oneroot/' preseed.cfg
cat <<EOF >> preseed.cfg
d-i partman-basicfilesystems/no_swap boolean false
d-i partman-auto/expert_recipe string oneroot :: 1000 50 -1 ext4 \\
 \$primary{ } \$bootable{ } method{ format } \\
 format{ } use_filesystem{ } filesystem{ ext4 } \\
 mountpoint{ / } \\
.
EOF

  2. Edit preseed.cfg and make your own customisations if any.

  3. Install VM and send back some information to the community with popularity contest.

    virt-install --connect qemu:///system \
  --console pty,target_type=serial \
  --disk size=10,driver.discard=unmap,target.bus=virtio \
  --graphics none \
  --initrd-inject preseed.cfg \
  --location http://ftp.no.debian.org/debian/dists/buster/main/installer-amd64 \
  --name debian10 \
  --os-type linux \
  --os-variant debian10 \
  --ram 2048 \
  --vcpus 2 \
  --extra-args 'console=ttyS0,115200n8 serial locale=nb_NO keymap=no auto=true mirror/country=manual mirror/http/hostname=ftp.no.debian.org mirror/http/directory=/debian mirror/http/proxy= passwd/make-user=false popularity-contest/participate=true file=/preseed.cfg'
debian  libvirt 

See also