OpenBSD manual page server

Manual Page Search Parameters

VMCTL(8) System Manager's Manual VMCTL(8)

vmctlcontrol the virtual machine daemon

vmctl command [arg ...]

The vmctl utility is used to control the virtual machine monitor (VMM) subsystem. A VMM manages virtual machines (VMs) on a host. The VMM subsystem is responsible for creating, destroying, and executing VMs.

Within the commands, the size argument can be specified with a human-readable scale, using the format described in scan_scaled(3). The id argument can be either a numeric, non-zero identifier or alternatively the name of a virtual machine.

The options are as follows:

id
Using cu(1) connect to the console of the VM with the specified id.
path -s size
Creates a VM disk image file with the specified path and size, rounded to megabytes.
[filename]
Load the configuration from the specified file.
[filename]
Reload the configuration from the default configuration file.
[name] [-c] -k path -m size [-d path] [-i count]
Starts a VM defined by the specified name and parameters:
Automatically connect to the VM console.
path
Disk image file (may be specified multiple times to add multiple disk images).
count
Number of network interfaces to add to the VM.
path
Kernel to load when booting the VM.
size
Memory size of the VM, rounded to megabytes.
[id]
Lists VMs running on the host, optionally listing just the selected VM id.
id
Stops (terminates) a VM defined by the specified VM id.

/etc/vm.conf
Default configuration file.
/var/run/vmd.sock
UNIX-domain socket used for communication with vmd(8).

The vmctl utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs. vmctl may fail due to one of the following reasons:

Create a 4.5 Gigabyte disk image, disk.img:

$ vmctl create disk.img -s 4.5G

Create a new VM with 512MB memory, one network interface, one disk image ('disk.img') and boot from kernel '/bsd':

$ vmctl start "myvm" -m 512M -i 1 -d disk.img -k /bsd

Terminate VM number 1:

$ vmctl stop 1

vmm(4), vm.conf(5), rc.conf(8), vmd(8)

The vmctl command first appeared in OpenBSD 5.9.

Mike Larkin <mlarkin@openbsd.org> and Reyk Floeter <reyk@openbsd.org>.

January 3, 2016 OpenBSD-5.9