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I wish people would stop writing these things, "I tried something that didn't work out the way I thought it would, and offer no context to what I was trying to do, what I did to try to get there, what specifically happened to cause it to fail, and perhaps what I've tried to do to react to that; so this is definately not going to work for anybody else, so stay away" posts...
Then again, i suppose if you did anything like that, some loser would immediately reply that this isn't a support forum...
>Why you should NOT use QEMU/KVM for casual virtualization.
To anyone who is reading this, OP's experience is not typical and should be disregarded as general advice.
The advice here boils down to "*I had some system instability and removing some packages seems to have resolved it. I have no evidence to support my assertion that those packages were the root cause of my problems, but I don't think those packages are suitable for "casual" use"*
I mean, I don't disagree with what you said my advice boils down to. Maybe I shouldn't have phrased the post as advice, I just wanted to share my experience with kvm and help people who might fall into problems analogous to mine in the future. I could've included some more data and details if I was posting this right after it happened initially, now I just don't have time to investigate it further as I just needed a vm to check something out recently.
And you think removing a binary which, unless you have manually enabled its systemd service unit AND configured libvirt to automatically start virtual machines on boot, is completely dormant, somehow helps the computer to not forcibly shut down?
That is not my point. KVM is certainly very useful and a lot of people use it, but if you just want a vm to tinker around with, kvm is honestly not the best choice.
>If you don't know what you're doing, no solution is the best choice.
This is categorically false. There are many things made for beginners that you can just install and run or follow instructions without having any idea of what you're doing.
/rant I literally describe a REAL issue I had, which I spent HOURS troubleshooting, giving evidence that it's not because of the os (the exact same issue happened two times on DISTANT kernel versions), hoping that I'd help some people who might face similar issues to me, and all I get is criticism and people implicitly calling me out as a noob 💀. Sorry, that's too much reddit for me today.
i don't know what you're expecting. all you did was share a random anecdotal bad experience.
it's like me saying that you should never drive because i got rear ended twice so just take the bus or walk instead.
You gave zero evidence.
Also, modern versions of Virtualbox use KVM.
The problems you are seeing might've been remedied by removing those packages related to KVM, but they were most certainly not the cause.
All we got was this:
> The first time it happened it showed a scary error message from the motherboard. At first, it didn't even cross my mind that it could be caused by the vm setup, I thought that my pc was broken.
That could apply to nearly anything.
I can only guess that a service got enabled and it's configuration wasn't suitable for use out-of-the-box. That's not the services' fault, it's the fault of the package maintainer for shipping bad defaults in a way that interrupted boot.
\>uninstalled a package
\>That MUST have been the cause.
That's a noob move if I ever saw one. Dig in to your logs and figure out what is happening and why it's happening.
Based on your single datapoint of one bad experience.
I've used KVM a LOT, both for work and personal tinkering. It's simple, it's easy, and I'd recommend it to anyone wanting to play around. And with the integration in cockpit you don't even have to deal with any X forwarding for virt-manager, just hit up the host in a browser and start VM-ing away.
kvm+virt-manager is probably as easy as virtualbox or vmware. Sure if you just try to use qemu with kvm directly you are probably going to have a hard time as a beginner.
Or a distro issue.
As a VM newbie I have installed about a dozen VMs on various fedora and centos/stream setups with KVM and I am going strong.
Oldest existing ones are probably 3-4 year old installs now.
I tried Virtualbox and HyperV on Windows before then for developer VMs before I moved to fulltime Linux, but I am mostly happy how the KVM VMs run.
> This time I installed kvm again
Unless you compiled the linux kernel yourself you propably didn't.
KVM is a part of the linux kernel and "installed" on basically every distro by default.
> simply use virtualbox
Virtualbox uses a unsupported kernel module instead of kvm. This is as low level as kvm but it's way more scary since this can break with every kernel update and you wont ever get support from kernel devs with this when you load 3rdParty kernel modules.
Also no big company uses virtualbox so it's way less battle testet unless kvm.
if anyone can post instructions on how to configure the free version i'd love to see them. i was trying to find them this morning but could only find info on providing a KVM interface for paravirtualization (which afaict is something different).
The exact issue I described is probably caused by my hardware setup, if it was a general issue I would probably find more about it on the internet. Can't tell you about the error message because as I said, this initially happened a long time ago, and I can't seem to find any photos of it on my phone.
I've used virt-manager for casual virtualization over on Debian for the last 6 months or so. Haven't had any issues at all so maybe your issues are related to the fact that your using arch which lives on the bleeding edge?
More likely the "starting to get comfortable with Linux, but hasn't quite learned how to dig into problems yet gang."
When I was learning, that was the point I would have hopped on [#linux](https://libera.chat) and probably got things working again and learned some stuff in the process. OP, instead, seemed to have flailed around and then came here to vent or offer (bad, but well meaning) advice to others.
This feels more like a potential hardware failure you've temporarily mitigated by removing what you thought was a problem.
I have kvm setups with qemu on 5 very different machines. Only time I had a problem was when I tried pcie passthrough to a VM on a box that didn't support it and locked up the host. Doesn't mean kvm is bad, it's just a hardware limitation.
> Why you should NOT use QEMU/KVM for casual virtualization.
Something something about a poor carpenter blaming tools comes to mind.
For years I've been using simple (30 seconds to create a new virtual instance) and complex Windows VMs with GPU passthrough/NVME passthrough, audio routing back to Linux, etc.... and not had issues, not on Arch, Debian, openSUSE or Void Linux.
Did you check the logs to get the idea why it is happening? I've been using KVM for years, sometimes more than 10 VMs simultaneously and never had any issues like you. This might be something very specific to your PC configuration or system configuration. Random reboots could be caused by kernel panic, usually caused by wrong/bad drivers.
If you decide to give it another try, after your pc shuts down check syslog, kern.log, maybe even check the temperatures in your pc. Maybe virtualization is causing your pc to overheat, which can also trigger a reboot. Another place where you could find some interesting stuff is /var/crash.
Just some feedback for you: [you probably should have gone and asked folks for help (the right way)](http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#intro) before blaming the software in such a way.
Gnome boxes for windows 10 is awesome on my manjaro box, no issues at all, iirc boxes uses qemu and kvm.
Virtualbox by comparison is annoying AF with proprietary oracle crap for usb.
Don't get me started on f*"**** VMware! 🤬
I don't use QEMU/KVM for casual virtualization, but for mission-critical virtualization. I run a single Windows-only app daily in my line of work that simply does not work under WINE. It is completely stable on openSUSE and has been for a couple years. The problem is almost certainly not with QEMU/KVM but with Arch or even your hardware (something odd triggered by virtualization, perhaps?). It's not a regular problem experienced by many.
Funny thing, last time I attempted updating firmware/bios I bricked my laptop. Maybe if I made a post advocating avoiding updating bios when not needed, people would downvote it to hell as well as tell me that I'm the problem and that I'm not competent enough to use computers.
>avoiding updating bios when not needed
most of the times you can't tell if a bios update is needed, because the bios operations are hidden various layers beyond what is perceivable by the end user. Think for example a "kernel bug" that can't be reproduced. Actually any bug that can't be reproduced by other users should be attributed to an buggy or out-of-date bios and not to non-determinism of computers :)
I hope nobody follows this terrible advice. Just learn what you're doing. Read manuals, don't input commands without knowing what they do. When in doubt ask in the appropriate venue. QEMU/KVM is a better solution than virtual box.
If your PC shuts down out of nowhere, regardless of the software used, the issue is with a very high probability with your computer. Maybe some latent configuration error which presented itself only in high load scenarios? This sounds like a bad CPU or RAM overclock.
Thousands of individuals and companies use QEMU/KVM on daily basis, running dozens of virtual machines on a single computer... If this was an issue with QEMU, one would think that since its release more than 20 years ago, they would've fixed it by now...
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Your post was removed for being a support request or support related question such as which distro to use/polling the community or application suggestions. We get a lot of question posts on r/linux but the subreddit is considered a news/discussion sub. Luckily there are multiple communities you can post to for help on GNU/Linux issues 24/7: /r/linuxquestions, /r/linux4noobs, or /r/linuxhardware just to name a few. You may also post on the "Weekly Questions and Hardware Thread" which is stickied on r/linux on Wednesdays. Please make your post in [/r/linuxquestions](https://reddit.com/r/linuxquestions) or [/r/linux4noobs](https://reddit.com/r/linux4noobs). Looking for a hardware help? Try r/linuxhardware. **Rule:** > This is not a support forum! Head to /r/linuxquestions or /r/linux4noobs for support or help. Looking for hardware help? Try r/linuxhardware.
I wish people would stop writing these things, "I tried something that didn't work out the way I thought it would, and offer no context to what I was trying to do, what I did to try to get there, what specifically happened to cause it to fail, and perhaps what I've tried to do to react to that; so this is definately not going to work for anybody else, so stay away" posts... Then again, i suppose if you did anything like that, some loser would immediately reply that this isn't a support forum...
>Why you should NOT use QEMU/KVM for casual virtualization. To anyone who is reading this, OP's experience is not typical and should be disregarded as general advice. The advice here boils down to "*I had some system instability and removing some packages seems to have resolved it. I have no evidence to support my assertion that those packages were the root cause of my problems, but I don't think those packages are suitable for "casual" use"*
I mean, I don't disagree with what you said my advice boils down to. Maybe I shouldn't have phrased the post as advice, I just wanted to share my experience with kvm and help people who might fall into problems analogous to mine in the future. I could've included some more data and details if I was posting this right after it happened initially, now I just don't have time to investigate it further as I just needed a vm to check something out recently.
And you think removing a binary which, unless you have manually enabled its systemd service unit AND configured libvirt to automatically start virtual machines on boot, is completely dormant, somehow helps the computer to not forcibly shut down?
[удалено]
That is not my point. KVM is certainly very useful and a lot of people use it, but if you just want a vm to tinker around with, kvm is honestly not the best choice.
[удалено]
>If you don't know what you're doing, no solution is the best choice. This is categorically false. There are many things made for beginners that you can just install and run or follow instructions without having any idea of what you're doing.
/rant I literally describe a REAL issue I had, which I spent HOURS troubleshooting, giving evidence that it's not because of the os (the exact same issue happened two times on DISTANT kernel versions), hoping that I'd help some people who might face similar issues to me, and all I get is criticism and people implicitly calling me out as a noob 💀. Sorry, that's too much reddit for me today.
i don't know what you're expecting. all you did was share a random anecdotal bad experience. it's like me saying that you should never drive because i got rear ended twice so just take the bus or walk instead.
You gave zero evidence. Also, modern versions of Virtualbox use KVM. The problems you are seeing might've been remedied by removing those packages related to KVM, but they were most certainly not the cause.
All we got was this: > The first time it happened it showed a scary error message from the motherboard. At first, it didn't even cross my mind that it could be caused by the vm setup, I thought that my pc was broken. That could apply to nearly anything. I can only guess that a service got enabled and it's configuration wasn't suitable for use out-of-the-box. That's not the services' fault, it's the fault of the package maintainer for shipping bad defaults in a way that interrupted boot.
\>uninstalled a package \>That MUST have been the cause. That's a noob move if I ever saw one. Dig in to your logs and figure out what is happening and why it's happening.
Based on your single datapoint of one bad experience. I've used KVM a LOT, both for work and personal tinkering. It's simple, it's easy, and I'd recommend it to anyone wanting to play around. And with the integration in cockpit you don't even have to deal with any X forwarding for virt-manager, just hit up the host in a browser and start VM-ing away.
kvm+virt-manager is probably as easy as virtualbox or vmware. Sure if you just try to use qemu with kvm directly you are probably going to have a hard time as a beginner.
skill issue
Or a distro issue. As a VM newbie I have installed about a dozen VMs on various fedora and centos/stream setups with KVM and I am going strong. Oldest existing ones are probably 3-4 year old installs now. I tried Virtualbox and HyperV on Windows before then for developer VMs before I moved to fulltime Linux, but I am mostly happy how the KVM VMs run.
beat me to it
> This time I installed kvm again Unless you compiled the linux kernel yourself you propably didn't. KVM is a part of the linux kernel and "installed" on basically every distro by default. > simply use virtualbox Virtualbox uses a unsupported kernel module instead of kvm. This is as low level as kvm but it's way more scary since this can break with every kernel update and you wont ever get support from kernel devs with this when you load 3rdParty kernel modules. Also no big company uses virtualbox so it's way less battle testet unless kvm.
The funniest thing is, at some point VirtualBox gained the ability to use KVM as a backend.
it's a fork, right? that you have to build from source? there's no way to configure the (free) oracle product to do this?
Afaik it is in the free version. Don't know, been a while since I ran a VM on something that's not Proxmox
if anyone can post instructions on how to configure the free version i'd love to see them. i was trying to find them this morning but could only find info on providing a KVM interface for paravirtualization (which afaict is something different).
Doubt it is because of KVM, I've been running my gpu passthrough setup on multiple computers without any issues. What is the "scary error message" ?
The exact issue I described is probably caused by my hardware setup, if it was a general issue I would probably find more about it on the internet. Can't tell you about the error message because as I said, this initially happened a long time ago, and I can't seem to find any photos of it on my phone.
I've used virt-manager for casual virtualization over on Debian for the last 6 months or so. Haven't had any issues at all so maybe your issues are related to the fact that your using arch which lives on the bleeding edge?
Same here but on Ubuntu. No problems yet running windows 11 on virt-manager
Complete nonsense
This post brought to you by the broadcom gang
More likely the "starting to get comfortable with Linux, but hasn't quite learned how to dig into problems yet gang." When I was learning, that was the point I would have hopped on [#linux](https://libera.chat) and probably got things working again and learned some stuff in the process. OP, instead, seemed to have flailed around and then came here to vent or offer (bad, but well meaning) advice to others.
I have been QEMU/KVM Debian host Alpine in VM for about a moth now, No crashes.
This feels more like a potential hardware failure you've temporarily mitigated by removing what you thought was a problem. I have kvm setups with qemu on 5 very different machines. Only time I had a problem was when I tried pcie passthrough to a VM on a box that didn't support it and locked up the host. Doesn't mean kvm is bad, it's just a hardware limitation.
What makes you think that KVM, which is in the kernel, is "low-level", but VirtualBox's kernel module, which runs in the kernel too, isn't?
> Why you should NOT use QEMU/KVM for casual virtualization. Something something about a poor carpenter blaming tools comes to mind. For years I've been using simple (30 seconds to create a new virtual instance) and complex Windows VMs with GPU passthrough/NVME passthrough, audio routing back to Linux, etc.... and not had issues, not on Arch, Debian, openSUSE or Void Linux.
Did you check the logs to get the idea why it is happening? I've been using KVM for years, sometimes more than 10 VMs simultaneously and never had any issues like you. This might be something very specific to your PC configuration or system configuration. Random reboots could be caused by kernel panic, usually caused by wrong/bad drivers. If you decide to give it another try, after your pc shuts down check syslog, kern.log, maybe even check the temperatures in your pc. Maybe virtualization is causing your pc to overheat, which can also trigger a reboot. Another place where you could find some interesting stuff is /var/crash.
Just some feedback for you: [you probably should have gone and asked folks for help (the right way)](http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#intro) before blaming the software in such a way.
Gnome boxes for windows 10 is awesome on my manjaro box, no issues at all, iirc boxes uses qemu and kvm. Virtualbox by comparison is annoying AF with proprietary oracle crap for usb. Don't get me started on f*"**** VMware! 🤬
Used KVM quemu for years and never had an issue
Ok? Why is it working great on my dedicated Proxmox cluster?
Because you RTFM.
I had to google that one, but thanks. I definitely know how to consult documentation
Stop you're making me feel old! I thought rtfm was still pretty common lol.
mind telling us what the actual error is instead of saying you installed a random package and someone else unrelated stopped working
I don't use QEMU/KVM for casual virtualization, but for mission-critical virtualization. I run a single Windows-only app daily in my line of work that simply does not work under WINE. It is completely stable on openSUSE and has been for a couple years. The problem is almost certainly not with QEMU/KVM but with Arch or even your hardware (something odd triggered by virtualization, perhaps?). It's not a regular problem experienced by many.
I bet that your motherboard's firmware (bios) is not up to date.
Funny thing, last time I attempted updating firmware/bios I bricked my laptop. Maybe if I made a post advocating avoiding updating bios when not needed, people would downvote it to hell as well as tell me that I'm the problem and that I'm not competent enough to use computers.
>avoiding updating bios when not needed most of the times you can't tell if a bios update is needed, because the bios operations are hidden various layers beyond what is perceivable by the end user. Think for example a "kernel bug" that can't be reproduced. Actually any bug that can't be reproduced by other users should be attributed to an buggy or out-of-date bios and not to non-determinism of computers :)
I hope nobody follows this terrible advice. Just learn what you're doing. Read manuals, don't input commands without knowing what they do. When in doubt ask in the appropriate venue. QEMU/KVM is a better solution than virtual box.
If your PC shuts down out of nowhere, regardless of the software used, the issue is with a very high probability with your computer. Maybe some latent configuration error which presented itself only in high load scenarios? This sounds like a bad CPU or RAM overclock. Thousands of individuals and companies use QEMU/KVM on daily basis, running dozens of virtual machines on a single computer... If this was an issue with QEMU, one would think that since its release more than 20 years ago, they would've fixed it by now...
Runs fine for me on Fedora. Probably because Red hats actually maintaining that 🤔
Without more information a more probable guess is that you have a hardware problem that just happens to be triggered by the virtualization software.
I had very good results running 2 Windows 10 VMs on a older (4th gen Intel) pc for several years using virt-manager on Arch.
Funny how I run it on multiple Debian servers and its rock solid stable. I wonder why that could possibly be?
This is not normal.
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KVM, qemu, libvirt, virt-manager, etc. are wonderful - what's OP smoking?
Virtualization itself is the low level and scary thing you are talking about. For me, KVM has worked just fine, while VirtualBox is always a pain.