Archy's Blog

I'm using plain KVM + Libvirt as my hypervisor of choice in my Homelab since it gives me a lot of flexibility, reliability and performance. Installing VMs using traditional installers allows for customizations during install but if all you're doing is quickly spinning up a VM to test something, pre-built Cloud Images are probably a better choice.  The Cloud Images can be customized though before importing them using tools like virt-sysprep or cloud-init. In this article, I'll be covering a workflow using provided Cloud Images and Cloud Init to bootstrap ephemeral Linux Servers. First, we'll have to download the cloud image, I'll be using a Amazonlinux Cloud Image this time: [root@hyv02 ~]# curl -4 -f -k -L -Z -o '/var/kvm/nfs-vm-templates/amazonlinux-2023-2025-07-21-x86_64.qcow2' -X 'GET' -H 'Accept: application/octet-stream' -H 'User-Agent: curl/1.33.7' https://cdn.amazonlinux.com/al2023/os-images/2023.8.20250721.2/kvm/al2023-kvm-2...

I'm using plain KVM + Libvirt as my hypervisor of choice in my Homelab since it gives me a lot of flexibility, reliability and performance. Installing VMs using traditional installers allows for customizations during install but if all you're doing is quickly spinning up a VM to test something, pre-built Cloud Images are probably a better choice.  The Cloud Images can be customized though before importing them using tools like virt-sysprep or cloud-init . In this Article, I'll be covering my workflow using virt-sysprep with a Alma Cloud Image although any other cloud image should work. [root@hyv02 ~]# curl -4 -f -k -L -Z -o '/var/kvm/nfs-vm-templates/almalinux-9-2025-05-22-x86_64.qcow2' -X 'GET' -H 'Accept: application/octet-stream' https://raw.repo.almalinux.org/almalinux/9/cloud/x86_64/images/AlmaLinux-9-GenericCloud-9.6-20250522.x86_64.qcow2 [root@hyv02 ~]# chown root:root /var/kvm/nfs-vm-templates/almalinux-9-2025-05-22.x86_64.qcow2; chmod 60...

  There's an older version covering EL8 I already wrote up guides for EL7 and EL8, so I might as well write one for EL9 since I've been using it for almost 2.5 years now. I'll start with a minimal install of AlmaLinux 9 with the latest updates applied. First, install the required packages to make the host a hypervisor: [archy@hyv02 ~]$ sudo -y --refresh install qemu-kvm libvirt libguestfs-tools virt-install tuned swtpm cockpit cockpit-machines [archy@hyv02 ~]$ sudo systemctl enable --now libvirtd.service tuned.service [archy@hyv02 ~]$ sudo tuned-adm profile virtual-host NOTE: Tuned is optional but might give you just a little bit more optimization for your workload. Next up, network configuration. I'll create a bond with 2 NICs which can then be used for vlans and bridges. [archy@hyv02 ~]$ sudo nmcli connection add type bond con-name bond0 ifname bond0 mode 802.3ad [archy@hyv02 ~]$ sudo nmcli connection add type ethernet con-name bond0-ens2f0 ifname ens5f0...

If a system does not boot anymore, it's usually easiest to boot from a live-media and chroot into the installation to troubleshoot the issue at hand. I'll be using the archlinux installation iso to chroot into a debian install to fix a kernel update that's gone sideways. Once in the arch installation, make sure that the disks are all detected: root@archiso ~ # lsblk NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS loop0 7:0 0 853.9M 1 loop /run/archiso/airootfs sr0 11:0 1 1.2G 0 rom /run/archiso/bootmnt vda 254:0 0 32G 0 disk ├─vda1 254:1 0 976M 0 part └─vda2 254:2 0 31G 0 part ├─vg_base-lv_root 253:0 0 3.8G 0 lvm ├─vg_base-lv_usr 253:1 0 5.7G 0 lvm ├─vg_base-lv_var 253:2 0 3.8G 0 lvm ├─vg_base-lv_var_log 253:3 0 3.8G 0 lvm ├─vg_base-lv_var_tmp 253:4 0 1.9G 0 lvm ├─vg_base-lv_tmp 253:5 0 488M 0 lvm ├─vg_base-lv_home 253:6 0 976M 0 lvm └─vg_base-lv_...