libvirt-user

The ansible libvirt-user role lets you get install libvirt, and then configures the system to allow the current user to set up guests.

Most ansible roles available for libvirt either install libvirt or configures libvirt with many options and bells and whistles. All you really need for a simple set up however, is to install libvirt and enable a regular user to use libvirt.

This role installs libvirt and configures the current running user to be able to use KVM via libvirt with the typical distro defaults.

Requirements

Run a supported OS/distribution:

• SUSE SLE / OpenSUSE
• Red Hat / Fedora
• Debian / Ubuntu

Role Variables

• skip_install: set this to true if you want to skip installation, this is set to False by default

• skip_configuration: set this to true if you want to skip configuration, this is set to False by default. Configuration consists of adding the user to the respective libvirt groups and verifying that the user is effective. Typically we need two runs when configuring, one to add the user the required groups, and a second time to verify the user's group changes are in effect.

• only_install: set this to true if you only want to install libvirt. By default this is set to False.

• only_verify_user: set to False by default. This will ensure that we do the handy work to do what is needed to enable your user to run libvirt as a regular user. Typical recommended use of this ansible role is to run with the default of this set to False, and then a second time with this set to True to verify if you need to log out and back in.

Dependencies

None.

Example Playbook

Below is an example playbook, say a bootlinux.yml file:

---
- hosts: localhost
  roles:
    - role: mcgrof.libvirt-user

But you want to run this twice, once with the default only_verify_user set to False and then with only_verify_user set to True, the last would be a check to ensure we inform the user to log out and back in so that the group changes take effect So for instance you would have:

# Does the actual work
ansible-playbook -i hosts playbooks/libvirt_user.yml

# Verify if the changes are already effective if not warn the user to log
# out and back in.
ansible-playbook -i hosts playbooks/libvirt_user.yml -e "only_verify_user=True"

Running libvirt as a regular user

This documents the logic used by this ansible role to let a regular user run libvirt.

vagrant can be used to call libvirt without requiring root privileges. To do this this ansible role ensures the user which runs vagrant is part of the following groups:

• kvm
• libvirt
• qemu on Fedora / libvirt-qemu on Debian

Debian has its own set of instructions on [https://wiki.debian.org/KVM#Connecting_locally_to_libvirt_as_regular_user](connecting locally to libvirt as a regular user). Debian uses libvirt-qemu as the userid which runs qemu, Fedora uses qemu. The qcow2 files created are ensured to allow the default user qemu executes under by letting the qemu user group to write to them as well. We have the defaults for debian on this project, to override the default group to use for qemu set the value need on the environment variable:

• ${PN_U}_VAGRANT_QEMU_GROUP

You can override the default user qemu will run by modifying `/etc/libvirt/qemu.conf' user and group settings there.

Vagrant with apparmor and selinux

If on a system with apparmor or selinux enabled, there may be more work required on your part. The easiest solution is to disable it if you can afford it.

XXX: add a task to do this for users.

License

GPLv2