Unable to use virt-manager

Question

On Ubuntu server 11.10 I am trying to install a virtual machine using virt-manager. I believe that I have everything right, but when I go and run the command virt-manager I get the following error message:

File "/usr/share/virt-manager/virt-manager.py", line 383, in <module>
  main()
File "/usr/share/virt-manager/virt-manager.py", line 285, in main
  raise RuntimeError(_("Unable to initialize GTK: %s") % gtk_error)
RuntimeError: Unable to initialize GTK: could not open display

I want to use virt-manager so that I can quickly and efficiently create multiple (6) virtual machines, but is there any other alternative that does not take hours per host system, and is still lightweight?

My machine is as follows:

• Ubuntu Server 11.10
• 8 cores @ 2.5ghz
• 64 gb ram
• Packages:
  • qemu-kvm
  • libvirt-bin
  • virt-manager
  • bridge-utils
  • gnome-core

Solution

Are you running X on the server ? If not, you can run it from a second machine over ssh

ssh -X user@server

Or you can run a light weight X session on the server, run a web interface (convirt or similar), or run virsh (command line interface).

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/KVM/Virsh

Comments

[Reid]

how do I install it? on my mac when I try to do ssh like that I get /usr/bin/xauth: file /home/rkersey/.Xauthority does not exist

[Panther]

Try installing xauth sudo apt-get install xauth