The document discusses libvirt, an open-source toolkit for interacting with various hypervisors, including bhyve, which recently received support from Roman Bogorodskiy. It provides installation and usage instructions for libvirt and its Python bindings, py-libvirt, as well as the virt-manager GUI application for managing virtual machines. Additionally, it mentions the Jenkins libvirt plugin for creating VMs on demand during build jobs and encourages community involvement in improving the bhyve support.

1. Libvirt and bhyve
Craig Rodrigues
rodrigc@FreeBSD.org
Bay Area FreeBSD Users Group
July 10, 2014

2. libvirt

3. What is libvirt?
● Open source project: http://libvirt.org
● Toolkit to interact with hypervisors: KVM, Xen,
LXC, OpenVZ, Usermode Linux, VirtualBox,
VMWare ESX, Hyper-V, Parallels, Bhyve
● C library, with bindings for other languages:
Python, Ruby, Java, C#, Ocaml, Perl, PHP
●
Used by many 3rd
party applications

4. Libvirt architecture
Source:
http://www.tuxradar.com/content/howto-linux-and-wind

5. libvirt and bhyve

6. Libvirt and bhyve:
Thanks to Roman
● Roman Bogorodskiy <novel@freebsd.org> has
added bhyve support to libvirt
● Roman has pushed the code upstream to
libvirt.org

7. Installing the code
● Need to build from ports, patches committed on July
9, 2014
● Update ports tree:
portsnap fetch; portsnap update
● Make sure you have libvirt 1.2.6 or higher
● Build it:
cd /usr/ports/devel/libvirt; make; make install
● In future, pkg install devel/libvirt

8. Running the code
● Customize /usr/local/etc/libvirtd.conf
● Start the demon: libvirtd
● Edit a config file in XML format with the bhyve
VM info
● Run commands via virsh to start the VM
● See step-by-step instructions:
http://people.freebsd.org/~rodrigc/libvirt/libvirt-bhyve

9. py-libvirt

10. py-libvirt
● Python bindings for libvirt
● Available in ports: /usr/ports/devel/py-libvirt

11. py-libvirt sample code
import libvirt
import sys
# Note we need to specify the URL here
conn = libvirt.openReadOnly("bhyve:///system")
if conn == None:
print 'Failed to open connection to the hypervisor'
sys.exit(1)
try:
print("All domains: ",conn.listAllDomains())
print("Defined domains: ", conn.listDefinedDomains())
dom0 = conn.lookupByName("bhyve")
except:
print 'Failed to find the main domain'
sys.exit(1)
print("Domain 0: id %d running" % (dom0.ID()))
print(dom0.info())

12. virt-manager

13. What is virt-manager?
● GUI application for interacting with libvirt
● Written in Python, with GTK bindings for GUI
● Available in ports:
/usr/ports/deskutils/virt-manager
● Patch to port for bhyve required:
http://people.freebsd.org/~rodrigc/libvirt/virt-manage

14. virt-manager screenshot

15. Jenkins and libvirt

16. Jenkins libvirt plugin
● Libvirt slaves plugin:
https://wiki.jenkins-ci.org/display/JENKINS/Libvirt+S
● Allows VM's to be created on demand in
response to build jobs, and shut down after job
is complete
● See step-by-step instructions:
http://people.freebsd.org/~rodrigc/libvirt/libvirt-bhyve

17. Thanks!
● Roman Bogorodskiy <novel@freebsd.org>,
wrote the code, pushed it upstream
● Jason Helfman <jgh@freebsd.org>, maintains
the libvirt port

18. I need help
● Need more people to try this stuff out
● Report bugs to
freebsd-virtualization@freebsd.org
(see http://lists.freebsd.org )
● Supply code, patches, and documentation
● Implement more of the libvirt API for bhyve, and
send patches to Roman