Installing QEMU / KVM on Ubuntu¶

Checking Prerequisites¶

Check if CPU supports virtualization¶

lscpu | grep Virtualization

:::info if the out put is

1. Virtualization type: full then CPU supports virtualization.
2. Virtualization: AMD-V or Virtualization: VT-x then CPU supports Virtualization also enabled :::

Confirming CPU Virtualization enabled in BIOS¶

egrep -c '(vmx|svm)' /proc/cpuinfo

:::info If output is 0 then CPU virtualization is disabled or not supported :::

Checking if KVM modules are loaded¶

lsmod | grep kvm

:::info If KVM modules are loaded the system starts acting as Hypervisor

If not loaded then performance is slow because of software emulation :::

Manually loading KVM modules¶

for intel CPU¶

sudo modprobe kvm
sudo modprobe kvm_intel

for AMD CPU¶

sudo modprobe kvm
sudo modprobe kvm_amd

:::info To get more information of kvm module

sudo modinfo kvm

Installing QEMU/KVM¶

sudo apt install \
 qemu-kvm \
 qemu-system-x86 \
 qemu-utils \
 libvirt-daemon-system \
 bridge-utils \
 libvirt-clients \
 virtinst \
 qemu-utils \
 virt-manager \
 virt-viewer \
 ovmf \
 swtpm \
 guestfs-tools \
 libosinfo-bin

Explanation of the Packages Installed¶

Post Installation¶

Validating the installation¶

sudo virt-host-validate qemu

Start and Enable the libvirt service¶

sudo systemctl start libvirtd
sudo systemctl enable libvirtd

Check the Status¶

systemctl status libvirtd

Add current user to libvirt and kvm group¶

sudo usermod -aG libvirt,kvm $USER

Start fresh session¶

su $USER

Validate kvm host¶

virt-host-validate