Using Virt-Manager on Debian
Virt-Manager is an awesome front end for running QEMU VMs on top of KVM. This is a great alternative to VirutalBox and since the latest version of Virtualbox has been moved to the “contrib” section in Debian (due to a non-free compiler that is required to builds the BIOS) it is one of the only 100% free software GUIs for managing virtual machines. To get virt-manager working debian you will need the following:
apt-get install qemu-kvm libvirt-bin virt-manager
Could not access KVM kernel module: Permission denied failed to initialize KVM: Permission denied
user:group
is defined in /etc/libvirtr/qemu.conf
1 by default this is nobody so this is why the error message occurs. In order to fix this, edit this file and add your username and group to this file. The file should end up looking something like this:
# The user for QEMU processes run by the system instance. It can be 215 # specified as a user name or as a user id. The qemu driver will try to 216 # parse this value first as a name and then, if the name doesn't exist, 217 # as a user id. 218 # 219 # Since a sequence of digits is a valid user name, a leading plus sign 220 # can be used to ensure that a user id will not be interpreted as a user 221 # name. 222 # 223 # Some examples of valid values are: 224 # 225 # user = "qemu" # A user named "qemu" 226 # user = "+0" # Super user (uid=0) 227 # user = "100" # A user named "100" or a user with uid=100 228 # 229 #user = "root" 230 user = "username" 231 # The group for QEMU processes run by the system instance. It can be 232 # specified in a similar way to user. 233 #group = "root" 234 group = "groupname"
systemctl restart libvirtd.service
Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on bluesky, mastodon, or via email.
Check out some more stuff to read down below.
Most popular posts this month
- 2024
- Reinstalling Windows at 1am
- SQLite DB Migrations with PRAGMA user_version
- My Custom Miniflux CSS Theme
- How to Disable Wayland in Debian Testing
Recent Favorite Blog Posts
This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.
- Give Your Spouse the Gift of a Couple's Email Domain from mtlynch.io
- Skip the Next iPhone from Articles on Jose M.
- Have smart glasses finally hit an inflection point? from The Torment Nexus
- The McPhee method from the jsomers.net blog
- Pluralistic: LLMs are slot-machines (16 Aug 2025) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
- Pluralistic: Bluesky creates the world's weirdest, hardest-to-understand binding arbitration clause (15 Aug 2025) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
- Just a Little More Context Bro, I Promise, and It’ll Fix Everything from Jim Nielsen’s Blog
- The Futzing Fraction from Deciphering Glyph
Articles from blogs I follow around the net
If you’re like me; you like files, you like web technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, you like markdown, you like kanban, you like pomodoro, and you like apps. If this sounds like you reach out. I’ll be open sourcing something in the coming weeks a…
via Colin Devroe September 3, 2025Pluralistic: The worst possible antitrust outcome (03 Sep 2025)
Today's links The worst possible antitrust outcome: Hope you like enshittification. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: Amazon drivers hang phones from trees; DVD Jon v Windows DRM; Chevron's dirty tricks. Upcoming appearan…
via Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow September 3, 2025Give a Problem. Grow a Programmer.
In 2009, I kicked off my senior year in college with a class that ultimately changed the way I thought about my degree—and my future.
via flower.codes September 3, 2025Generated by openring