Creating a new virtual machine does not allow to select ISO image

[Alvin]

virt-manager: 0.6.1-1ubuntu4

Steps to reproduce:
- Connect to remote qemu host with SSH
- Run the Virtual Machine Creation wizard (New)
- Installation Method: choose 'Local install media' (ISO image or CDROM), press forward
- 'Browse' can not be pressed. Typing the location of the ISO file on the server will also not work.

Result:
It's impossible to create a new virtual machine using the wizard.

[Peter Matulis (petermatulis)]

Do you really expect to have the ISO tunneled over SSH? I'm not sure that would be a great thing. But I agree the dialog should be presented some other way.

One option is to store the ISO images on the server and launch virt-manager remotely:

$ ssh -X user@host virt-manager

[Alvin (alvind)]

I do expect that to work, slow as it might be.

The point is that you should be able to select the ISO, even if that ISO is only located on the server.
Launching virt-manager remotely defeats the point of having built-in SSH support. I'm also not a big fan of installing an entire desktop environment on a server, just to run 1 little program. Take a look at the dependencies of virt-manager. You don't want that on a command-line only system.

[Alvin (alvind)]

I succeeded in using an ISO image, while connected with qemu+ssh. This requires that you add a storage pool with iso volumes in it. Then, you can just type the path to the iso on the server.

The bug still stands. You have to know the path and can't browse for the file.

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz (glaubitz)]

@Peter:

I wouldn't it understand the dialog as tunneling an ISO image over SSH but browsing the server's filesystem and chose the ISO image there. I have installed a WindowsXP virtual machine on my computer at university. Now I'm at home and wanted to install Office 2007 with the ISO image that's on a raid5 on the server.

The expected behaviour of the "Choose a CD source device" would be, that I can browse the servers local filesystem, choose an image and click ok to have it mouted to the virtual machine. VMWare server does it *exactly* this way. You can use the client software (called console) to manage a remote VM on a server and you can mount whatever image you want any time.

This is definetely a bug. Virt-Manager should always browse the filesystem of the system running the virtual machine and not simply the local machine.

Adrian

[Marc Deslauriers (mdeslaur)]

Thanks for reporting this issue.

Can you still reproduce this on a more recent version of virt-manager, such as the one in Karmic or Lucid?

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz (glaubitz)]

Hi Marc,

I'm not on Ubuntu at the moment but Fedora 13 so I can only speak for this release. F13 ships with virt-manager 0.8.3 and this version still has that bug, one still cannot choose an ISO file when connecting to a remote kvm server with virt-manager. I think it might be better to report it upstream, I will check and do it if possible.

Please do not close that bug report but leave open for lucid+1.

Thanks,

Adrian

[Marc Deslauriers (mdeslaur)]

Thanks Adrian. If you open an upstream bug, could you please add it here for tracking purposes?

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz (glaubitz)]

Hi Marc,

just reported the bug upstream and linked the upstream and Ubuntu bug report against each other. The upstream report can be found here:

<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=576880>

Adrian

[Marc Deslauriers (mdeslaur)]

Thanks!

[gbear14275 (gbear14275)]

If you place your .iso files into the default storage pool at /var/lib/libvirt/images you can browse to them.

[gbear14275 (gbear14275)]

even after placing .iso files into the default location I'm running into an error: Checking installer location failed: Could not find media '/var/lib/libvirt/images/debian-504-amd64-netinst.iso'.

I have tried changing the file ownership and permissions.

[Marc Deslauriers (mdeslaur)]

Related bug:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=531420

[jessesmith (jessefrgsmith)]

This bug still exists on Ubuntu Server 12.04 (32-bit). It is not possible to browse for an ISO file on either the server hosting the virtual environment nor the client connecting to the server.

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz (glaubitz)]

> This bug still exists on Ubuntu Server 12.04 (32-bit).

As already mentioned earlier, you can simply ssh into your kvm server and start virt-manager with remote forwarding. Unless your network is really slow, you will get a reasonable performance with that (use the option -C for ssh). I'm using virt-manager this way all the time.

In any case, I don't think it would make much sense to be able to browse for ISO files on the connecting client (you don't really want to tunnel a 650 MB ISO file through SSH, do you?).

[Marc Deslauriers (mdeslaur)]

This bug is about being able to browse local iso media on the client.

You need to create a storage pool on the server to browse an iso file on the server:

1- Select remote connection
2- Select Edit/Connection details from top menu
3- Click on storage tab
4- Click on "+"
5- Give it a name, and select "dir: filesystem directory", click "Forward"
6- In target path, type in path on server where .iso images reside. Click "Finish".

Now, when creating a new virtual machine, you can select the storage pool on the left, and select the .iso file you desire on the right.

[Marc Deslauriers (mdeslaur)]

Actually, after reading this bug through, it mentions not being able to read an iso on the server too. This has been working for a long time now. Marking bug as fixed.

Please file a new bug if browsing an iso file in a storage pool on the server isn't working for you.