Virt-clone

virt-clone command is included in virtinst package in Ubuntu.

https://linux.die.net/man/1/virt-clone

Clonning

0) Stop origin virtual machine: virsh shutdown OLD_MACHINE

1) virt-clone --original ORIGIN_MACHINE --name NEW_MACHINE --auto-clone

2) Rename qcow2 files and edit xml file our use virsh edit

3) virsh start NEW_MACHINE

4) Connect to new server and: hostnamectl set-hostname NEW_SERVER_NAME

5) Modify /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg and change: preserve_hostname=true

6) Modify IP: /etc/netplan/50-cloud-init.yaml

 virt-clone --original ORIGIN_MACHINE --name NEW_MACHINE --auto-clone
 Allocation 'XXXXX-clone.qcow2     24% ....

Errors

virt-clone --original ORIGIN_MACHINE --name NEW_MACHINE --auto-clone
ERROR    Disk /path/to/file.qcow2 is already in use by other guests ['OTHER_MACHINE']. (Use --check path_in_use=off or --check all=off to override)
Solution:
virsh undefine OTHER_MACHINE

virt-clone --original ORIGIN_MACHINE --name NEW_MACHINE --auto-clone
ERROR    Either --auto-clone or --file is required, use '--auto-clone or --file' and try again

Related commands

• virt-sysprep (libguestfs-tools package)
• virsh edit
• /etc/libvirt/qemu
• qemu-img convert
• virt-install, virt-resize
• virt-manager
• virsh vol-clone
• virsh domrename

Activities

• Clone a virtual machine using https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/how-to-clone-existing-kvm-virtual-machine-images-on-linux/ as reference

See also

• virtinst (package): virt-install, virt-clone, virt-convert and virt-xml
• QEMU: qemu-img, qemu-ga, qemu.conf, virsh qemu, QEMU guest agent (qemu-ga), qcow2, qemu-nbd, qemu-img map, qemu-io, /etc/libvirt/qemu.conf, QEMU releases, VENOM, qemu-nbd --help, qemu-system, uses: docker/setup-qemu-action
• libvirtd: systemctl status libvirtd, systemctl status libvirt-guests, Libvirt release notes, logs, libvirtd.conf, /etc/libvirt/, /var/log/libvirt/
• KVM, Installation, QEMU, virsh, virtinst, libguestfs-tools, libvirt, qemu, Red Hat Virtualization (RHV), MacVTap, Virtio, oVirt, KVM services, KVM networking, KVM graphics, CPU, KVM on ARM