[clug] Is Virt-manager in Debian 10 missing functionality?

[George at Clug]

 Hi,

I have discovered differences in Virt-Manager between Debian 9 to Debian 10. To me there appears to be missing functionality.

The differences exist on the same machine (i.e. I can boot between two different drives, one is Debian 9, the other Debian 10). I have also tested a newly built Debian 10 on different hardware.

Should anyone know why the differences, please let me know and maybe point me to documentation that explains why?

I will keep searching and testing to see why/what could be happening to cause this.

1) In my installation in Virt-Manager's drop down list for Video, Model, there is no longer a Cirrus, VMVGA, or Xen video model types to choose from?  The only Video model options are QXL, VGA, and virtio.

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/6/html/virtualization_administration_guide/sub-section-libvirt-dom-xml-devices-video
This has a mandatory type attribute which takes the value vga, cirrus, vmvga, xen, vbox, or qxl depending on the hypervisor features available. You can also provide the amount of video memory in kibibytes (blocks of 1024 bytes) using vram and the number of figure with heads.

When I check qemu, these extra video models are available, and I can set them by typing in the actual name, just they are not in the drop down list in Virt-Manager.
# qemu-system-x86_64 --help | grep vga
-vga [std|cirrus|vmware|qxl|xenfb|tcx|cg3|virtio|none]

2) I do not see sb16 or es1370 sound devices.
https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/6/html/virtualization_administration_guide/section-libvirt-dom-xml-sound-devices
Valid values are specific to the underlying hypervisor, though typical choices are 'es1370', 'sb16', 'ac97', and 'ich6'.
Valid values are 'duplex' (advertises a line-in and a line-out) and 'micro' (advertises a speaker and a microphone).

When I check qemu, these sound devices are available, and I can type these into Virt-Manager, just they are not in Virt-Manager's drop down list. The only options I now see in the drop down list are AC97, HDA (ICH6), and HDA (ICH9).

When I check the system for what are the support sound types...
# qemu-system-x86_64 -soundhw help
Valid sound card names (comma separated):
sb16        Creative Sound Blaster 16
es1370      ENSONIQ AudioPCI ES1370
ac97        Intel 82801AA AC97 Audio
adlib       Yamaha YM3812 (OPL2)
gus         Gravis Ultrasound GF1
cs4231a     CS4231A
hda         Intel HD Audio
pcspk       PC speaker

3) I noticed that in "Connection Details" the "Network Interfaces" tab is missing, there is only Overview, Virtual Networks and Storage tabs. I did find the below reason for the loss of the Network Interfaces tab...

https://blog.wikichoon.com/2019/04/host-network-interfaces-panel-removed.html
The biggest piece we removed was the UI for managing host network interfaces. This is the Connection Details->Network Interfaces panel, and the New Interface wizard for defining host network definitions for things like bridges, bonds, and vlan devices.
The state today

Nowadays NetworkManager can handle bridging natively and is much more powerful than what virt-manager/libvirt/netcf provide. The virt-manager UI was more likely to shoot you in the foot than make things simple. And it had become increasingly clear that virt-manager was not the place to maintain host network config UI.

So we made the decision to drop all this from virt-manager in 2.0.0. netcf and the libvirt interface APIs still exist. If you're interested in some more history on the interface API/netcf difficulties, check out Laine's email to virt-tools-list.
https://www.redhat.com/archives/virt-tools-list/2018-October/msg00049.html


Another possible difference between Debian 9 and Debian 10 - I think that by default in Debian 9, when creating a virtual machine, the default emulator was "/usr/bin/kvm" where as in Debian 10, the default emulator appears to be "/usr/bin/qemu-system-x86_64". Can anyone confirm if this is a change?

Other changes appear to be the Chipset is Q35 by default, where as I believe it used to be 1440FX by default, and the Firmware is now called BIOS.


George.









I am sad to see this functionality go.
The older way?
https://computingforgeeks.com/how-to-install-kvm-virtualization-on-debian/

--virt-type=kvm

 --virt-type
    The hypervisor to install on. Example choices are kvm, qemu, xen, or kqemu.
    Availabile options are listed via 'virsh capabilities'
    in the <domain> tags.
========================================================
https://qemu.weilnetz.de/doc/qemu-doc.html
Cirrus CLGD 5446 PCI VGA card or dummy VGA card with Bochs VESA extensions (hardware level, including all non standard modes). 

https://manpages.debian.org/stretch/qemu-system-x86/qemu-system-x86_64.1.en.html
Cirrus CLGD 5446 PCI VGA card or dummy VGA card with Bochs VESA extensions