VIRT-VIEWER(1) Virtualization Support VIRT-VIEWER(1)
NAME
virt-viewer - display the graphical console for a virtual machine
SYNOPSIS
virt-viewer [OPTIONS] [ID|UUID|DOMAIN-NAME]
DESCRIPTION
virt-viewer is a minimal tool for displaying the graphical console of a
virtual machine. The console is accessed using the VNC or SPICE
protocol. The guest can be referred to based on its name, ID, or UUID.
If the guest is not already running, then the viewer can be told to
wait until it starts before attempting to connect to the console. The
viewer can connect to remote hosts to lookup the console information
and then also connect to the remote console using the same network
transport.
OPTIONS
The following options are accepted when running "virt-viewer":
-h, --help
Display command line help summary
-V, --version
Display program version number
-v, --verbose
Display information about the connection
-c URI, --connect=URI
Specify the hypervisor connection URI
-w, --wait
Wait for the domain to start up before attempting to connect to the
console
-r, --reconnect
Automatically reconnect to the domain if it shuts down and restarts
-z PCT, --zoom=PCT
Zoom level of the display window in percentage. Range 10-400.
-d, --direct
Do not attempt to tunnel the console over SSH, even if the main
connection URI used SSH.
-a, --attach
Instead of making a direct TCP/UNIX socket connection to the remote
display, ask libvirt to provide a pre-connected socket for the
display. This avoids the need to authenticate with the remote
display server directly. This option will only work when connecting
to a guest that is running on the same host as the virt-viewer
program. If attaching to the guest via libvirt fails, virt-viewer
will automatically fallback to trying a regular direct TCP/UNIX
socket connection.
-f, --full-screen
Start with the window maximised to fullscreen
If supported, the remote display will be reconfigured to match the
physical client monitor configuration, by enabling or disabling
extra monitors as necessary. This is currently implemented by the
Spice backend only.
To specify which client monitors are used in fullscreen mode, see
the CONFIGURATION section below.
--debug
Print debugging information
-H HOTKEYS, --hotkeys HOTKEYS
Set global hotkey bindings. By default, keyboard shortcuts only
work when the guest display widget does not have focus. Any
actions specified in HOTKEYS will be effective even when the guest
display widget has input focus. The format for HOTKEYS is
<action1>=<key1>[+<key2>][,<action2>=<key3>[+<key4>]]. Key-names
are case-insensitive. Valid actions are: toggle-fullscreen,
release-cursor, secure-attention, smartcard-insert and smartcard-
remove. The "secure-attention" action sends a secure attention
sequence (Ctrl+Alt+Del) to the guest. Examples:
--hotkeys=toggle-fullscreen=shift+f11,release-cursor=shift+f12
--hotkeys=release-cursor=ctrl+alt
Note that hotkeys for which no binding is given are disabled.
Although the hotkeys specified here are handled by the client, it
is still possible to send these key combinations to the guest via a
menu item.
-k, --kiosk
Start in kiosk mode. In this mode, the application will start in
fullscreen with minimal UI. It will prevent the user from quitting
or performing any interaction outside of usage of the remote
desktop session.
Note that it can't offer a complete secure solution by itself. Your
kiosk system must have additional configuration and security
settings to lock down the OS. In particular, you must configure or
disable the window manager, limit the session capabilities, use
some restart/watchdog mechanism, disable VT switching etc.
--kiosk-quit <never|on-disconnect>
By default, when kiosk mode is enabled, virt-viewer will remain
open when the connection to the remote server is terminated. By
setting kiosk-quit option to "on-disconnect" value, virt-viewer
will quit instead. Please note that --reconnect takes precedence
over this option, and will attempt to do a reconnection before it
quits.
--id, --uuid, --domain-name
Connect to the virtual machine by its id, uuid or name. These
options are mutual exclusive. For example the following command may
sometimes connect to a virtual machine with the id 2 or with the
name 2 (depending on the number of running machines):
virt-viewer 2
To always connect to the virtual machine with the name "2" use the
"--domain-name" option:
virt-viewer --domain-name 2
CONFIGURATION
A small number of configuration options can be controlled by editing
the settings file located in the user configuration directory:
<USER-CONFIG-DIR>/virt-viewer/settings
This file is a text file in INI format, with application options in the
[virt-viewer] group and per-guest options in a group identified by the
guest's UUID. The application options should not be edited manually.
There is also a special [fallback] group which specifies options for
all guests that don't have an explicit group.
For each guest, the initial fullscreen monitor configuration can be
specified by using the monitor-mapping key. This configuration only
takes effect when the -f/--full-screen option is specified.
The value of this key is a list of mappings between a guest display and
a client monitor. Each mapping is separated by a semicolon character,
and the mappings have the format
<GUEST-DISPLAY-ID>:<CLIENT-MONITOR-ID>.
For example, to map guest displays 1 and 2 to client monitors 2 and 3
for the guest with a UUID of e4591275-d9d3-4a44-a18b-ef2fbc8ac3e2, use:
[e4591275-d9d3-4a44-a18b-ef2fbc8ac3e2]
monitor-mapping=1:2;2:3
The monitor-mapping must contain ids of all displays from 1 to the last
desired display id, e.g. "monitor-mapping=3:3" is invalid because
mappings for displays 1 and 2 are not specified.
EXAMPLES
To connect to the guest called 'demo' running under Xen
virt-viewer demo
To use GUI for connecting to a guest running under QEMU
virt-viewer --connect qemu:///system
To connect to the guest with ID 7 running under QEMU
virt-viewer --connect qemu:///system 7
To wait for the guest with UUID 66ab33c0-6919-a3f7-e659-16c82d248521 to
startup and then connect, also reconnecting upon restart of VM
virt-viewer --reconnect --wait 66ab33c0-6919-a3f7-e659-16c82d248521
To connect to a remote console using TLS
virt-viewer --connect xen://example.org/ demo
To connect to a remote host using SSH, lookup the guest config and then
make a tunnelled connection of the console
virt-viewer --connect qemu+ssh://root@example.org/system demo
When using a SSH tunnel to connect to a SPICE console, it's recommended
to have ssh-agent running to avoid getting multiple authentication
prompts.
To connect to a remote host using SSH, lookup the guest config and then
make a direct non-tunnelled connection of the console
virt-viewer --direct --connect xen+ssh://root@example.org/ demo
AUTHOR
Written by Daniel P. Berrange, based on the GTK-VNC example program
gvncviewer.
BUGS
Report bugs to the mailing list
"http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/virt-tools-list"
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 2007-2014 Red Hat, Inc., and various contributors. This
is free software. You may redistribute copies of it under the terms of
the GNU General Public License
"https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html". There is NO WARRANTY, to
the extent permitted by law.
SEE ALSO
virsh(1), "virt-manager(1)", "spice-client(1)", the project website
"http://virt-manager.org"
perl v5.26.2 2018-07-27 VIRT-VIEWER(1)