[fedora-virt] Host Graphical Console

[Dean Hunter]

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?