How to install KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine) on Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala), 64 bit edition (x86_64).

We implement here the virtualisation philosophy of Ubuntu: we use KVM as backend virtualisation technology, libvirt as its toolkit/API, and the frontends for managing VMs include will be virt-manager (GUI) and virsh (CLI).

Even in the Ubuntu Server 9.04 there is a nice LAMP option with Apache, PHP and MySQL, some more steps are necessary to turn Ubuntu Server 9.04 into a real Drupal development environment. After these steps, you will have a development server, where all Drupal versions, unlimited number of domains and development projects can be set up. Use this tutorial to get a more sophisticated Drupal development environment. And don't forget, there is a simple way in Ubuntu 9.04 for Drupal 6: sudo apt-get install drupal6

With some scripting on Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) we can simple generate fully customised Drupal LAMP development servers, as virtual appliance to VMware, or to other virtualization environments like XEN or KVM. In this how-to I'll show how to use this method to have various development or test servers in one hardware box running Ubuntu 8.10 and VMware Server 2.0.

I'm using a machine with Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) and VMware Server 2.0, as my host system. VMware Server 2.0 install on Ubuntu 8.10. can be learned here or here. We will need free IP addresses for the virtual machines, so you will need a properly configured DHCP server or a router, as well.

Even VMware server 2.0 has a nice web GUI on https://localhost:8333/, you can use scripts to start and stop VM guest directly from your terminal.

Before use, you have to set some hard coded parameters, like HOST_USER.


#!/bin/bash
# This script will start/stop/status VMware machine
#
# Written by Ez-Aton
# http://www.tournament.org.il/run
#
# Modified for VMware server 2.0 by doka@wepoca.net
# http://www.wepoca.net
#
#