Vagrant QEMU Provider

This is a Vagrant plugin that adds a simple QEMU provider to Vagrant, allowing Vagrant to control and provision machines using QEMU.

Notes: test with Apple Silicon / M1 and CentOS / Ubuntu aarch64 image

Compatible with

Tested:

MacOS >= 12.4
QEMU >= 7.0.0
CentOS (centos-7-aarch64-2009-4K)
Ubuntu (see Wiki for detais)
Debian buster64 on x86_64 (see Wiki for detais)

Others:

(MacOS < 12.4) + (QEMU >= 7.0.0) : update OS, or use QEMU 6.x

QEMU 6.x: use following config:

config.vm.provider "qemu" do |qe|
  qe.machine = "virt,accel=hvf,highmem=off"
  qe.cpu = "cortex-a72"
end

Features

Import from a Libvirt vagrant box or qcow2 image
- To use box for Paralles or VMware Fusion, see Wiki for details
Start VM without GUI
SSH into VM
Provision the instances with any built-in Vagrant provisioner
Synced folder support via SMB
Basic operation: up, ssh, halt, destroy
Basic suport to forwarded ports, see vagrant doc for details

Usage

Make sure QEMU is installed, if not:

brew install qemu

Install plugin:

vagrant plugin install vagrant-qemu

Prepare a Vagrantfile, see Example, and start:

vagrant up --provider qemu

Notes:

may need password to setup SMB on Mac, see vagrant doc for details
need username/password to access shared folder

Box format

Same as vagrant-libvirt version-1:

qcow2 image file named box.img
metadata.json file describing box image (provider, virtual_size, format)
Vagrantfile that does default settings

Configuration

This provider exposes a few provider-specific configuration options:

basic
- ssh_port - The SSH port number used to access VM (IP is 127.0.0.1), default: 50022
- arch - The architecture of VM, default: aarch64
- machine - The machine type of VM, default: virt,accel=hvf,highmem=off
- cpu - The cpu model of VM, default: cortex-a72
- smp - The smp setting (Simulate an SMP system with n CPUs) of VM, default: 2
- memory - The memory setting of VM, default: 4G
debug/expert
- net_device - The network device, default: virtio-net-device
- image_path - The path to qcow2 image for box-less VM, default is nil value
- qemu_dir - The path to QEMU's install dir, default: /opt/homebrew/share/qemu
- extra_qemu_args - The raw list of additional arguments to pass to QEMU. Use with extreme caution. (see "Force Multicore" below as example)
- extra_netdev_args - extra, comma-separated arguments to pass to the -netdev parameter. Use with caution. (see "Force Local IP" below as example)
- control_port - The port number used to control vm from vagrant, default is nil value. (nil means use unix socket)
- debug_port - The port number used to export serial port of the vm for debug, default is nil value. (nil means use unix socket, see "Debug" below for details)
- no_daemonize - Disable the "daemonize" mode of QEMU, default is false. (see "Windows host" below as example)

These can be set like typical provider-specific configuration:

# Basic Vagrant config (API version 2)
Vagrant.configure(2) do |config|
  # ... other stuff

  config.vm.provider "qemu" do |qe|
    qe.memory = "8G"
  end
end

Example

Try with a sample box

vagrant init ppggff/centos-7-aarch64-2009-4K
vagrant up --provider qemu

With a local box

# Basic Vagrant config (API version 2)
Vagrant.configure(2) do |config|
  config.vm.box = "test-box"
  config.vm.box_url = "file:///Users/xxx/test.box"
  config.vm.box_check_update = false
end

With a local qcow2

# Basic Vagrant config (API version 2)
Vagrant.configure(2) do |config|
  config.vm.provider "qemu" do |qe, override|
    override.ssh.username = "xxx"
    override.ssh.password = "vagrant"

    qe.image_path = "/Users/xxx/test.qcow2"
  end
end

Work with a x86_64 box (basic config)

Vagrant.configure(2) do |config|
  config.vm.box = "centos/7"

  config.vm.provider "qemu" do |qe|
    qe.arch = "x86_64"
    qe.machine = "q35"
    qe.cpu = "max"
    qe.net_device = "virtio-net-pci"
  end
end

Forwarded ports

# Basic Vagrant config (API version 2)
Vagrant.configure(2) do |config|
  # ... other stuff

  config.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest: 80, host: 8080
end

Force Multicore (x86)

Thanks to taraszka for providing this config.

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.box = "centos/7"

  config.vm.provider "qemu" do |qe|
    qe.arch = "x86_64"
    qe.machine = "q35"
    qe.cpu = "max"
    qe.smp = "cpus=2,sockets=1,cores=2,threads=1"
    qe.net_device = "virtio-net-pci"
    qe.extra_qemu_args = %w(-accel tcg,thread=multi,tb-size=512)
    qe.qemu_dir = "/usr/local/share/qemu"
  end
end

Force Local IP

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.box = "debian/bullseye64"

  config.vm.provider "qemu" do |qe|
    qe.extra_netdev_args = "net=192.168.51.0/24,dhcpstart=192.168.51.10"
  end
end

Windows host

Windows version QEMU doesn't support daemonize mode and unix socket (Notes: not tested)

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  # ... other stuff

  config.vm.provider "qemu" do |qe|
    qe.no_daemonize = true
    qe.control_port = 33333
    qe.debug_port = 33334
  end
end

Debug

Serial port is exported to unix socket: <user_home>/.vagrant.d/tmp/vagrant-qemu/<id>/qemu_socket_serial, or debug_port.

To debug and login to the GuestOS from serial port:

unix socket
1. Get the id: .vagrant/machines/default/qemu/id in same directory with Vagrantfile
2. Get the path to qemu_socket_serial
3. Use nc to connect: nc -U /Users/.../qemu_socket_serial
debug_port (for example: 33334)
- Use nc to connect: nc localhost 33334

To send ctrl+c to GuestOS from nc, try:

unix socket
- echo 03 | xxd -r -p | nc -U /Users/.../qemu_socket_serial
debug_port (for example: 33334)
- echo 03 | xxd -r -p | nc localhost 33334

Build

To build the vagrant-qemu plugin, clone this repository out, and use Bundler to get the dependencies:

bundle

Once you have the dependencies, build with rake:

bundle exec rake build

Known issue / Troubleshooting

1. failed to create shared folder

We couldn't detect an IP address that was routable to this
machine from the guest machine! Please verify networking is properly
setup in the guest machine and that it is able to access this
host.

As another option, you can manually specify an IP for the machine
to mount from using the `smb_host` option to the synced folder.

The reason is that the user mode of qemu currently in use does not support ping. smb_host needs to be explicitly specified. For example:

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  # ... other stuff

  config.vm.synced_folder ".", "/vagrant", type: "smb", smb_host: "10.0.2.2"
end

2. netcat does not support the -U parameter

I had netcat installed through home brew and it does not support the -U parameter.

I fixed it by uninstalling netcat in home brew brew uninstall netcat

Thanks @kjeldahl fix this at issue #6

3. Vagrant SMB synced folders require the account password to be stored in an NT compatible format

If you get this error when running vagrant up

On your M1 Mac, go to System Preferences > Sharing > File Sharing > Options...
Tick "Share Files and Folders using SMB"
Tick your username
Click Done
Run vagrant up again

4. The box you're using with the QEMU provider ('default') is invalid

This may cause by invalid default qemu dir (/opt/homebrew/share/qemu).

You can find the correct one by:

echo `brew --prefix`/share/qemu

And then set it (for example /usr/local/share/qemu) in the Vagrantfile as:

config.vm.provider "qemu" do |qe|
  qe.qemu_dir = "/usr/local/share/qemu"
end

TODO

Support NFS shared folder
Support package VM to box
More configures
Better error messages
Network
GUI mode

dubrousky/vagrant-qemu