Ubuntu Manpage: virt-viewer - display the graphical console for a virtual machine

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.

       In some circumstances the viewer may need to grab the mouse pointer. The default key
       sequence for releasing the grab is "Ctrl_L"+"Alt_L", however, this can be overridden using
       the "--hotkeys" argument documented below.

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.

--auto-resize <always|never>
Controls whether it is permitted to attempt to resize the remote framebuffer to match
the local window size. This currently defaults to on, but note that not all servers
will support this.

-s, --shared
Permitted a shared session with multiple clients

--cursor auto|local
Control how the mouse cursor is rendered. "auto" is the default behaviour, which will
honour the behaviour requested by the remote server. This may involve the server
remote rendering the cursor into the framebuffer, or sending the cursor details to the
client to render. "local" overrides this default to request that the local desktop
cursor is always rendered regardless of what the server requests. The latter is rarely
needed, but can be used if the server has a bad configuration that results in its own
cursor being hidden.

--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, zoom-in, zoom-out,
zoom-reset, secure-attention, usb-device-reset, 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, --keymap
Remap and/or block supplied keypresses to the host. All key identifiers are case-
sensitive and follow the naming convention as defined in gdkkeysyms.h without the
GDK_KEY_ prefix.

Running the application with --debug will display keypress symbols in the following
way:
"Key pressed was keycode='0x63', gdk_keyname='c'"
"Key pressed was keycode='0xffeb', gdk_keyname='Super_L'"

The format for supplying a keymap is:
<srcKeySym1>=[<destKeySym1>][+<destKeySym2][,<srckeySym2>=[<destKeySym1]

To block a keypress simply assign an empty parameter to the srcKeySym.

Example:
--keymap=Super_L=,Alt_L=,1=Shift_L+F1,2=Shift_L+F2

This will block the Super_L (typically Windows Key) and ALT_L keypresses and remap key
1 to Shift F1, 2 to Shift F2.

-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 https://gitlab.com/virt-viewer/virt-viewer/-/issues

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright (C) 2007-2020 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.