virt-manager - Man Page

• Launch the GUI: virt-manager
• Connect to a hypervisor: virt-manager --connect hypervisor_uri
• Don't fork virt-manager process into background on startup: virt-manager --no-fork
• Print debug output: virt-manager --debug
• Open the "New VM" wizard: virt-manager --show-domain-creator
• Show domain details window for a specific virtual machine/container: virt-manager --show-domain-editor name|id|uuid
• Show domain performance window for a specific virtual machine/container: virt-manager --show-domain-performance name|id|uuid
• Show connection details window: virt-manager --show-host-summary

tldr.sh

virt-manager [Options]

virt-manager is a desktop tool for managing virtual machines. It provides the ability to control the lifecycle of existing machines (bootup/shutdown,pause/resume,suspend/restore), provision new virtual machines and various types of store, manage virtual networks, access the graphical console of virtual machines, and view performance statistics, all done locally or remotely.

Standard GTK options like --g-fatal-warnings are accepted.

The following options are accepted when running virt-manager

-h,  --help

Display command line help summary

--version

Show virt-manager's version number and exit

-c,  --connect

Specify the hypervisor connection URI

--debug

List debugging output to the console (normally this is only logged in ~/.cache/virt-manager/virt-manager.log). This function implies --no-fork.

--no-fork

Don't fork virt-manager off into the background. See Virt-Manager, SSH, and Forking section for more info.

--fork

Force forking virt-manager off into the background. This is the default behavior. See Virt-Manager, SSH, and Forking section for more info.

For these options, only the requested window will be shown, the manager window will not be run in this case. Connection autostart will also be disabled. All these options require specifying a manual --connect URI.

--show-domain-creator

Display the wizard for creating new virtual machines

--show-domain-editor NAME|ID|UUID

Display the dialog for editing properties of the virtual machine with unique ID matching either the domain name, ID, or UUID

--show-domain-performance NAME|ID|UUID

Display the dialog for monitoring performance of the virtual machine with unique ID matching either the domain name, ID, or UUID

--show-domain-console NAME|ID|UUID

Display the virtual console of the virtual machine with unique ID matching either the domain name, ID, or UUID

--show-host-summary

Display the host/connection details window.

Connection autostart will not be disabled and thus don't require specifying a manual --connect URI. But it supports --connect URI as well:

--show-systray

Launch virt-manager only in system tray

Historically, on startup virt-manager would detach from the running terminal and fork into the background. This was to force any usage of ssh to call ssh-askpass when it needed a password, rather than silently asking on a terminal the user probably isn't watching.

openssh 8.4p1 released in Sep 2020 added the SSH_ASKPASS_REQUIRE environment variable that saves us from having to do the fork dance.
<https://man.openbsd.org/ssh.1#SSH_ASKPASS_REQUIRE>

virt-manager now sets SSH_ASKPASS_REQUIRE=force. However to get this to work with libvirt ssh connections, you'll need libvirt 10.8.0 released in October 1st 2024.

virt-manager no longer forks by defaults.

You can get the old forking behavior with the --fork option, or by setting the VIRT_MANAGER_DEFAULT_FORK=yes environment variable.

However if you find you need forking for a usecase other than temporarily working around libvirt version issues, please let the virt-manager developers know by filing a bug report.

Please see  <https://virt-manager.org/bugs/>

Copyright (C) Red Hat, Inc, and various contributors. This is free software. You may redistribute copies of it under the terms of the GNU General Public License  <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html> . There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

virsh(1), virt-viewer(1), the project website  <https://virt-manager.org>

guestfs-security(1), virt-clone(1), virt-install(1), virt-v2v-support(1), virt-viewer(1).