VirtUI Manager

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A powerful, text-based Terminal User Interface (TUI) application for managing QEMU/KVM virtual machines using the libvirt Python API.

Why VirtUI Manager?

Managing virtual machines in a terminal environment has never been easier or more powerful. VirtUI Manager bridges the gap between the simplicity of command-line tools and the rich functionality of GUI-based solutions, offering the best of both worlds for virtualization administrators.

The Problem with Traditional Tools

• Virt-manager requires X11 forwarding, which is slow, resource-intensive, and often impossible in remote environments
• GUI-based solutions are heavy with X dependencies, making them unsuitable for headless servers or low-bandwidth connections
• Command-line tools lack the intuitive interface needed for complex VM management tasks
• Cockpit Machine is feature incomplete, and needs a lot of depencies. It is not multi hypervisor oriented
• Complex Deployment no tools to easily manage auto-installation of Virtual Machine with registration process

Why VirtUI Manager is Different

VirtUI Manager solves these challenges with:

• Lightweight Terminal Interface: No X11 dependencies, works perfectly over SSH
• Remote Management: Efficient low-bandwidth control of remote libvirt servers
• Rich Feature Set: Advanced VM management capabilities in a simple, intuitive interface
• Multi-server Support: Manage VMs across multiple libvirt servers from a single interface
• Performance Optimized: Built-in caching reduces libvirt calls and improves responsiveness (include a tracking resources call tool)
• Libvirt Event handler: Only get update on event from libvirt
• Migration Support: Live and offline VM migration capabilities and custom migration
• Bulk Operations: Execute commands across multiple VMs at once (including configuration)
• Web Console Access: Integrated VNC support with novnc over ssh tunnel for remote server
• CMD line interface: improved command line to manage VMs: multi hypervisors, VMs selection, clone operation, bulk command, install VM, etc...
• Auto Installation: Support auto installation for Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Archlinux, Alpine, OpenSUSE and SLES (with SCC registration)

Documentation

VirtUI Manager doc

CI check

Flatpak build

Requirements

• Recommended Minimal Terminal Size: 34x92. 34x128 is the recommended Size
• Remote Connection: SSH access to libvirt server (ssh-agent recommended)
• Python 3.7+
• libvirt with Python bindings
• libosinfo and osinfo-db for dynamic OS version discovery
• Python Dependencies: see requirements.txt file
• Optional: virt-viewer, novnc, websockify for enhanced functionality
• Tmux: To edit file with pseudo terminal

Note about Libvirt API

As there is no simple way to get sound and network model using libvirt API, the user can provides a list in his own configuration file.

To get a list of model for a machine type you can use the qemu command line:

qemu-system-x86_64 -machine pc-q35-10.1 -audio  model=help
qemu-system-x86_64 -machine pc-q35-10.1 -net  model=help

Possible User config parameters:

• network_models: List of allowed network models (default: ['virtio', 'e1000', 'e1000e', 'rtl8139', 'ne2k_pci', 'pcnet'])
• sound_models: List of allowed sound models (default: ['none', 'ich6', 'ich9', 'ac97', 'sb16', 'usb'])

Contributing

CONTRIBUTING.md

AI Assist

AI assistance is used to improve coding efficiency by automating boilerplate, suggesting relevant code completions, quickly detecting bugs, update the documentation, write test cases.

License

This project is licensed under the GPLv3 License.