[fedora-virt] Host Graphical Console

[Cole Robinson]

On 04/22/2013 04:23 PM, Dean Hunter wrote:
> On Tue, 2013-04-09 at 17:23 -0500, Dean Hunter wrote:
>> On Mon, 2013-04-08 at 16:30 -0400, Cole Robinson wrote:
>>> On 04/06/2013 11:05 AM, Dean Hunter wrote:
>>>> Could virt-manager be enhanced to open a graphical console on a remote
>>>> VM host similar to the way it can open a graphical console on a remote
>>>> VM guest?
>>>>
>>>
>>> No I don't think that's anything we will ever add to virt-manager. I can
>>> understand the desire but virt-manager is not about managing physical hosts.
>>>
>> I do not so much want to manage the host as to use scripts to rebuild
>> the guests before each round of testing. Sometimes the scripts need a
>> little editing to add or remove workarounds for problems between builds.
>>
>> I really like the feedback provided by the cpu, disk and network
>> activity graphs in virt-manager. I can start a rebuild and get a visual
>> indication when it has completed. Then I double-click to open a session
>> to a VM. 
>>
>> The rest of the GUI was very helpful while I was learning about libvirt
>> etc., but GUI's are slow and error prone when I need to repeat something
>> several times, hence the use of scripts. I was hoping for the best of
>> both worlds.
>>  
>>>> Today I have to use "ssh -X" or xrdp to the remote VM host. "ssh -X"
>>>> seems to leave something running if I open gedit for a quick
>>>> modification to a file as a logout needs to be followed by a ctrl-C to
>>>> get a command prompt. And xrdp seems to have a number of issues, besides
>>>> being "yet another" user interface.
>>>>
>>>
>>> There's also vnc-server/xvnc and xspice. But if your main qualm with ssh -X is
>>> that the ssh session doesn't exit cleanly after running gedit, I'd a) file a
>>> gedit bug and b) learn a simple command line text editor like nano to work
>>> around the issue in the interim.
>>>
>> Yes, I have tried vnc-server/xvnc and xspice. xvnc vs xrdp is an
>> interesting debate and depends on the client I expect to need to use.
>> The last time I looked at xspice it was not ready to run as a service;
>> see https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=885881.
>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Cole
>>
>> I do appreciate your response. It confirms that I have not overlooked a
>> significant alternative. I will report the bugs in ssh and Remote
>> Desktop Viewer.
>>
>>
> After further review, the problem I am experiencing with Gnome products
> from the SSH command line is a long standing design issue with access to
> dbus and auto-starting dbus-launch. See
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=663467
> 
> So I guess I need a directory of scripts that can be shared between the
> VM host and its peer machine that I use for most personal activities
> like music, e-mail, browsing from bookmarks, etc.; executing scripts
> from an SSH command line on the VM host and editing the scripts from the
> Gnome desktop on the personal machine. Would you use NFS to share the
> directory between two Fedora machines or is there another alternative?
> 

If hanging ssh exit is the main issue, I'd just add a shell alias or something
that does '<kill dbus>; exit'. But if you want to go the shared route NFS is
the common answer.

- Cole