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NAME

vmctl — control the virtual machine daemon

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

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.

VM COMMANDS

The options are as follows:

console id

Using cu(1) connect to the console of the VM with the specified id.

create path -s size

Creates a VM disk image file with the specified path and size, rounded to megabytes.

load [filename]

Load the configuration from the specified file.

reload [filename]

Reload the configuration from the default configuration file.

start [name] [-c] -k path -m size [-d path] [-i count]

Starts a VM defined by the specified name and parameters:

-c

Automatically connect to the VM console.

-d path

Disk image file (may be specified multiple times to add multiple disk images).

-i count

Number of network interfaces to add to the VM.

-k path

Kernel to load when booting the VM.

-m size

Memory size of the VM, rounded to megabytes.

status [id]

Lists VMs running on the host, optionally listing just the selected VM id.

stop id

Stops (terminates) a VM defined by the specified VM id.

FILES

/etc/vm.conf

Default configuration file.

/var/run/vmd.sock

UNIX-domain socket used for communication with vmd(8).

EXIT STATUS

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

• The VMM subsystem could not be enabled or disabled as requested.
• A requested VM-based operation could not be completed.

EXAMPLES

Create a 4.5 Gigabyte disk image, disk.img:

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:

SEE ALSO

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

HISTORY

The vmctl command first appeared in OpenBSD 5.9.

AUTHORS

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