This is a collection of random information about QEMU and KVM (mostly used through Virtual Machine Manager). In an ideal world I’d spend more time studying them all but I don’t have that kind of time so this will do.
Difference Between QEMU, KVM, libvirt and Virtual Machine Manager
QEMU
QEMU (Quick Emulator) is a type 2 hypervisor created by French developer Fabrice Bellard 1 in 2003. As a normal hypervisor, it is able to emulate hardware such as CPU and I/O devices. It interpret instructions sent to VM as real instruction send to the physical CPU.
There used to be a qemu-kvm, which was a fork of QEMU to integrate KVM acceleration (see below) but it has then been merged to mainline QEMU.
KVM
KVM is a kernel module for Linux developed by a company later acquired by Red Hat. It’s an API provided by the kernel for user space. To use it you need to write C code to call its module and create a virtual machine. KVM concerns itself with privileged CPU instructions.
End-user typically use KVM through QEMU (where it’s present as an acceleration method), although other VM manager, such as kvmtool also use it.
libvirt
libvirt is a CLI tool to unify the API used to create and manager VMs. It makes it easier for the end-user to interact with and create VMs with CLI such as virsh, virt-manager and virt-install.
Virtual Machine Manager (virt-manager)
Virtual Machine Manager is a GUI build on top of libvirt, which itself interacts with QEMU, which is typically used with KVM acceleration.
Bests Practices
To not (rightfully) trigger AppArmor’s (default) profile, ISOs should be placed in /var/lib/libvirt/boot/ and disk images (.qcow2 files) in /var/lib/libvirt/images/.
Adding two virtual networks, one external (NAT) and one isolated. See PenTest Home Lab Environement with QEMU/KVM for an example.
Install with CLI
It’s possible to use virt-install to install with the CLI as to make a installation less painless but I haven’t checked yet (TODO).
It’s also possible to extract the XML file from already created VM in order to use that for installing with the same settings (also TODO).
Windows Drivers
Windows needs special drivers called “VirtIO” that can be downloaded here.
Adding the ISO as a CD, we can install the required driver during Windows’ installation. Required drivers are NetKVM for network and viostor for SCSI (drives).
Windows 11
Windows 11 needs UEFI and TPM. I haven’t tried it yet but this blog gives a good explanation of what’s required.
Kali Linux
Apparently Kali is not a fan of VirtIO for its video. Changing the display interface to QXL fixes the problem.