virtinstall

Virtinstall is a command-line utility that automates the creation and installation of virtual machines using the libvirt virtualization toolkit. It supports multiple hypervisors supported by libvirt, including KVM/QEMU, Xen, and LXC, and is commonly used on Linux systems to deploy VMs quickly and reproducibly.

The tool works by assembling the configuration for a new virtual machine and initiating the installation process through the libvirt daemon. It can provision resources such as memory, CPU, and disk space, configure one or more network interfaces, and set installation media or sources. Installation can be performed from an ISO or CD image, a network location, or a PXE boot environment, and it supports both interactive installations and unattended setups using appropriate kernel parameters or kickstart/answer files.

Typical usage involves specifying essential parameters such as VM name, memory, and CPUs, along with storage, installation source, and networking. Common options include --name, --ram, --vcpus, --disk, --cdrom or --location, --os-type, --os-variant, --network, and --graphics. For example, a basic invocation might define a VM name, allocate 2 GB of RAM and 2 CPU cores, create a disk image, attach installation media, select an OS type and variant, connect a default network, and enable VNC graphics.

Virt-install is widely used for rapid VM deployment in administrative tasks, development and testing environments, and automation pipelines. It is often employed in scripts or orchestration workflows, though users new to libvirt may prefer a graphical tool such as virt-manager for initial exploration. See also libvirt, virt-manager, KVM, and QEMU.