QEMU-KVM with SPICE Support on Ubuntu 11.10 64-bit

SPICE server requires 64-bit system. Make sure you are running Oneiric x86_64.

1. Remove AppArmor

$ sudo invoke-rc.d apparmor stop
$ sudo update-rc.d -f apparmor remove
$ sudo apt-get autoremove --purge apparmor
$ sudo reboot

After the machine is rebooted, you can check if there are configurations or data folders not deleted automatically, if yes, you can delete them safely, for example:

$ cd /etc
$ sudo rm -fr apparmor*

2. Configure Bridge (optional)

This step is only required when you want to provide ethernet bridging for VMs.

First of all, bridging tool needs to be installed:

$ sudo apt-get install bridge-utils

By default, Ubuntu uses NetworkManager to configure network devices automatically. But here we need to edit the configuration file manually to add bridging settings:

$ sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet manual

auto br0
iface br0 inet static
address 192.168.96.88
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.96.0
broadcast 192.168.96.255
gateway 192.168.96.1
bridge_ports eth0
bridge_stp off
bridge_fd 0
bridge_maxwait 0

If your machine is using DHCP for IP configuration, change the third section (device br0) to:

auto br0
iface br0 inet dhcp
bridge_ports eth0
bridge_stp off
bridge_fd 0
bridge_maxwait 0

Save your configuration file, and restart network to take effect:

$ sudo invoke-rc.d networking stop
$ sudo invoke-rc.d networking start

Or, if you are working remotely, stopping network will disconnect you to the machine, just do reboot machine alternatively.

After restarted network or rebooted machine, use ifconfig and brctl show to check if ethernet briding works as expected.

$ brctl show
bridge name	bridge id		STP enabled	interfaces
br0		8000.5c63bf86e499	no		eth0

3. Install KVM and SPICE packages

The qemu-kvm version in Oneiric is 0.14, but Ubuntu’s compilation does not include SPICE support. We have to use another repository which has compiled qemu-kvm with SPICE support.

$ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:bderzhavets/qemu-git
$ sudo apt-get update

I don’t know if there are the other repositories better than the above found in Ubuntu wiki. But at least it works.

Install:

$ sudo apt-get install qemu-kvm virt-manager spice libspice-server

After installed the packages, your Oneiric is ready to run VM with SPICE support. Refer to another post to learn how to install guest with SPICE support.