10 Usage
mad edited this page 2018-12-01 17:50:43 +00:00

NLVMI is quite self-explanatory, but there are certainly some things that one needs to know.

Usermanagement

There are two types of nlvmi users. Admins and non admins. In the usermanagement is a button between the name and the password to toggle. The Admin can do everything, while a normal user can only start/stop his/her own machine. If a user has no password set, then that user can only be used for the vms as unix user and not login to nlvmi. An admin can have its own vms running under his account, or could create a user per vm or per vm-group or such. Unix users are getting created before a vm gets started.
There is no cleanup of unused unix accounts by now!

Servers

At least one server needs to be defined. If the management server also is a KVM host, then the connectstring can be left empty. The Name string does not need to be the actual hostname and could be anything. Remote servers are connected via ssh by using the connectstring. the unix-user nlvmi should be present on the remote-host and the ssh-key needs to be authorized. See the Installation page for details.

VMs

The creation and editing of VMs should probably be quite self explanatory. Nevertheless, here are a few hints that didn't fit in the placeholder of the fields. :-)
As soon as you choose the server, it scans the defined image and iso directories and created the dropdown menues. If you change anything, it might be woth to just change the server back and forth to get an updated dropdown.
The VNC display is set as integer which represents the display numer, which in turn means that the vnc server will listern to port 5900 + $display. The same is true for the vnc-websocket. Set it as integer which will be added to 5700. This means we have a maximum of 200 websockets! If the weboscket is not set, no novnc link gets shown and the vm needs to get connected through a VNC client. Look out that you do not use a VNC or websocket port multiple times!
Accessing NOVNC through https requires special setup. See the Installation page for details.
Images can get managed through the image management link within the top-bar.

The shutdown command is sent through acpi to the guest VMs. Make sure that some daemon is running to listen on these events. After a few seconds, the VM gets killed automatically if the VM is still up!

The autostart option gets set on the host during a cold-boot of the VM! So after toggling the option, a shutdown/start is needed to setup the needed startup scripts. As there are currently no init scripts / systemd unit, a cron entry is needed.... See the Installation page for details.

The arrows in the list of VMs is not only to move the order how they are displayed, but also the order in which they get autostarted! So if you have for example a virtual firewall, then this VM should probably be quite high within the list.