Use Ubuntu Cloud Image with KVM

4 min readJun 16, 2019

In this tutorial, we are going to create a virtual machine based on the Ubuntu cloud image. We will go through such steps as preparing image, cloud-init configuration and attaching logical volumes.

Preparation

Install required system packages:

$ sudo apt install qemu-kvm libvirt-bin qemu-utils genisoimage virtinst

Download Ubuntu cloud image:

$ wget https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/xenial/current/xenial-server-cloudimg-amd64-disk1.img

Verify that image format is QCOW2:

$ qemu-img info xenial-server-cloudimg-amd64-disk1.img
image: xenial-server-cloudimg-amd64-disk1.img
file format: qcow2
virtual size: 2.2G (2361393152 bytes)
disk size: 284M
cluster_size: 65536
Format specific information:
    compat: 0.10
    refcount bits: 16

Create directory for base images:

$ sudo mkdir /var/lib/libvirt/images/base

Move downloaded image into this folder:

$ sudo mv xenial-server-cloudimg-amd64-disk1.img /var/lib/libvirt/images/base/ubuntu-16.04.qcow2

Virtual machine image

Create directory for our instance images:

$ sudo mkdir /var/lib/libvirt/images/instance-1

Create a disk image based on the Ubuntu image:

$ sudo qemu-img create -f qcow2 -F qcow2 -o backing_file=/var/lib/libvirt/images/base/ubuntu-16.04.qcow2 /var/lib/libvirt/images/instance-1/instance-1.qcow2

Let’s take a look at the image:

$ sudo qemu-img info /var/lib/libvirt/images/instance-1/instance-1.qcow2
image: /var/lib/libvirt/images/instance-1/instance-1.qcow2
file format: qcow2
virtual size: 2.2G (2361393152 bytes)
disk size: 196K
cluster_size: 65536
backing file: /var/lib/libvirt/images/base/ubuntu-16.04.qcow2
Format specific information:
    compat: 1.1
    lazy refcounts: false
    refcount bits: 16
    corrupt: false

Current virtual size is 2.2 GB, let’s set it to 5 GB:

$ sudo qemu-img resize /var/lib/libvirt/images/instance-1/instance-1.qcow2 5G
Image resized.
$ sudo qemu-img info /var/lib/libvirt/images/instance-1/instance-1.qcow2
image: /var/lib/libvirt/images/instance-1/instance-1.qcow2
file format: qcow2
virtual size: 5.0G (5368709120 bytes)
disk size: 200K
cluster_size: 65536
backing file: /var/lib/libvirt/images/base/ubuntu-16.04.qcow2
Format specific information:
    compat: 1.1
    lazy refcounts: false
    refcount bits: 16
    corrupt: false

Cloud-Init will resize partitions to fill the available disk space on first boot.

Cloud-Init Configuration

Now we are going to create configs to make Cloud-Init do following:

create new user
configure SSH access by a public key

Create meta-data:

cat >meta-data <<EOF
local-hostname: instance-1
EOF

Read public key into environment variable:

$ export PUB_KEY=$(cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub)

Create user-data:

$ cat >user-data <<EOF
#cloud-configusers:
  - name: ubuntu
    ssh-authorized-keys:
      - $PUB_KEY
    sudo: ['ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL']
    groups: sudo
    shell: /bin/bashruncmd:
  - echo "AllowUsers ubuntu" >> /etc/ssh/sshd_config
  - restart ssh
EOF

Create a disk to attach with Cloud-Init configuration:

$ sudo genisoimage  -output /var/lib/libvirt/images/instance-1/instance-1-cidata.iso -volid cidata -joliet -rock user-data meta-data

Launch virtual machine

Start the virtual machine with two disks attached: instance-1.qcow2 as root disk and instance-1-cidata.iso as disk with Cloud-Init configuration.

$ virt-install --connect qemu:///system --virt-type kvm --name instance-1 --ram 1024 --vcpus=1 --os-type linux --os-variant ubuntu16.04 --disk path=/var/lib/libvirt/images/instance-1/instance-1.qcow2,format=qcow2 --disk /var/lib/libvirt/images/instance-1/instance-1-cidata.iso,device=cdrom --import --network network=default --noautoconsoleStarting install...
Domain creation completed.

Make sure the virtual machine is running:

$ sudo virsh list
 Id    Name                           State
----------------------------------------------------
 6     instance-1                     running

Get the IP address:

$ sudo virsh domifaddr instance-1
 Name       MAC address          Protocol     Address
----------------------------------------------------------------
 vnet0      52:54:00:1b:3b:4f    ipv4         192.168.122.201/24

Connect to the instance by the public key:

$ ssh ubuntu@192.168.122.201
Warning: Permanently added '192.168.122.201' (ECDSA) to the list of known hosts.
Welcome to Ubuntu 16.04.6 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.4.0-150-generic x86_64)ubuntu@instance-1:~$

If the virtual machine is not accessible, you may mount instance image and inspect it locally:

$ sudo guestmount -a /var/lib/libvirt/images/instance-1.img -m /dev/sda1 /mnt

To manage the virtual machine use virsh command:

#shutdown
sudo virsh shutdown instance-namereboot
sudo virsh reboot instance-name#start
sudo virsh start instance-name#remove
sudo virsh undefine instance-name

Attaching Logical Volumes

To test attachment let’s create fake 5 GB disk image:

dd if=/dev/zero of=disk.img bs=1 count=1 seek=5G

Find free loop device:

$ sudo losetup -f
/dev/loop11

Attach the image as a disk device:

$ sudo losetup /dev/loop11 disk.img

Fake device is ready, next we are going to create PV (physical volume) and VG (volume group).

$ sudo pvcreate /dev/loop11
  Physical volume "/dev/loop11" successfully created.
$ sudo vgcreate cloud /dev/loop11
  Volume group "cloud" successfully created

Create logical volume:

$ sudo lvcreate --name lv1 --size 1G cloud
  Logical volume "lv1" created.

Finally, attach new device:

sudo virsh attach-disk instance-1 /dev/cloud/lv1 vdb --config

config flag is used to write attachment configuration into the instance configuration file, otherwise, disk will not be attached after next reboot.

Connect to the virtual machine and check that new device is available:

$ ssh ubuntu@192.168.122.127 ls /dev/vdb
/dev/vdb