Installation guide

Chapter 19. Remote management of virtualized guests
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$ ssh-keygen -t rsa
3. Copying the keys to the remote hosts
Remote login without a password, or with a passphrase, requires an SSH key to be distributed to
the systems being managed. Use the ssh-copy-id command to copy the key to root user at the
system address provided (in the example, [e-mail]).
$ ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub [e-mail]
[e-mail]'s password:
Now try logging into the machine, with the ssh [e-mail] command and check in the
.ssh/authorized_keys file to make sure unexpected keys have not been added.
Repeat for other systems, as required.
4. Optional: Add the passphrase to the ssh-agent
Add the passphrase for the SSH key to the ssh-agent, if required. On the local host, use the
following command to add the passphrase (if there was one) to enable password-less login.
# ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
The SSH key was added to the remote system.
The libvirt daemon (libvirtd)
The libvirt daemon provide an interface for managing virtual machines. You must have the
libvirtd daemon installed and running on every remote host that needs managing.
$ ssh root@somehost
# chkconfig libvirtd on
# service libvirtd start
After libvirtd and SSH are configured you should be able to remotely access and manage your
virtual machines. You should also be able to access your guests with VNC at this point.
Accessing remote hosts with virt-manager
Remote hosts can be managed with the virt-manager GUI tool. SSH keys must belong to the user
executing virt-manager for password-less login to work.
1. Start virt-manager.
2. Open the File->Add Connection menu.
3. Input values for the hypervisor type, the connection, Connection->Remote tunnel over SSH, and
enter the desired hostname, then click connection.
19.2. Remote management over TLS and SSL
You can manage virtual machines using TLS and SSL. TLS and SSL provides greater scalability but
is more complicated than ssh (refer to Section 19.1, “Remote management with SSH”). TLS and SSL
is the same technology used by web browsers for secure connections. The libvirt management
connection opens a TCP port for incoming connections, which is securely encrypted and authenticated
based on x509 certificates.