KVM

The following describes how to launch a KVM system on Ubuntu in order to test the KVM detection.

Multipass

Multipass is a quick way to get an Ubuntu VM up and running. It is available on Windows, MacOS, and Linux. On Linux, Multipass will launch using QEMU with KVM.

To get a Multipass VM on Ubuntu setup to test whatsthis run the following:

snap install multipass
multipass launch focal --name test
multipass transfer whatsthis test:/home/ubuntu/whatsthis
multipass exec test ./whatsthis
multipass delete --force test

CLI

These instructions are identical to the QEMU instructions except for the addition of the "-enable-kvm" option used during the launch of the VM.

First, create some user-data to pass the VM that will setup the 'ubuntu' user with the password of 'password'. Also set your GitHub ID and it will automatically import your SSH key into the VM:

export GITHUB_ID=<GITHUB_ID>
sudo apt update
sudo apt install --yes cloud-image-utils
cat > user-data.yaml <<EOF
#cloud-config
password: password
chpasswd:
    expire: False
ssh_pwauth: True
ssh_import_id:
    - gh:$GITHUB_ID
EOF
cloud-localds seed.img user-data.yaml

Get the latest Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal) image and launch the VM:

wget https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/focal/current/focal-server-cloudimg-amd64.img
qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 2048 -nographic -snapshot \
    -netdev id=net00,type=user,hostfwd=tcp::2222-:22 \
    -device virtio-net-pci,netdev=net00 \
    -drive if=virtio,format=qcow2,file=focal-server-cloudimg-amd64.img \
    -drive if=virtio,format=raw,file=seed.img

Once the system has booted, transfer a local test binary run:

rsync -e "ssh -p 2222" whatsthis ubuntu@0.0.0.0:/home/ubuntu/whatsthis

Then either login with ubuntu and password or SSH to the system using:

ssh -o "StrictHostKeyChecking no" ubuntu@0.0.0.0 -p 2222

When done to close out of the qemu process using the escape sequence:

Ctrl-a c
(qemu) quit