virt-manager-web

A minimal container that runs virt-manager inside a GUI-enabled base image (based on jlesage/baseimage-gui) and exposes a web-accessible VNC session.

Why

I have a NAS which has Debian installed. The ultimate problem with it is that I am not willing to install other systems which have Hypervisor functionality built in. I installed Libvirt on it, which is accessible over SSH, but I need a way to access it seamlessly on machines like a Windows client or, eventually, a remote system, like a café PC.

Quick start

Important

If you see an error that says "Could not detect a default hypervisor. Make sure the appropriate QEMU/KVM virtualization and libvirt packages are installed to manage virtualization on this host.", hit "File" on the top left, then "Add Connection", select "Custom URI..." and then put qemu:///system?socket=/var/run/libvirt/libvirt-sock or whichever path you put into the field. I'd just keep the latter part the same, but I fear that would break stuff.

With Docker Compose:

services:
  virt-manager-web:
    image: ghcr.io/404oops/virt-manager-web:latest
    container_name: virt-manager-web
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - 5800:5800 # Web port
      - 5900:5900 # VNC port
    environment:
      - WEB_AUTHENTICATION=0
      - KEEP_APP_RUNNING=1
    volumes:
      - /var/run/libvirt/libvirt-sock:/var/run/libvirt/libvirt-sock:rw

And then run

docker-compose up -d

Or run it via the CLI:

docker run --name virt-manager-web \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  -p 5800:5800 \ # Web port
  -p 5900:5900 \ # VNC port
  -v /var/run/libvirt/libvirt-sock:/var/run/libvirt/libvirt-sock:rw \
  ghcr.io/404oops/virt-manager-web:latest

Then open the web GUI at:

http://localhost:5800

If you want VNC access instead, use port 5900.

Security note

This setup bind-mounts your host libvirt socket (/var/run/libvirt/libvirt-sock) into the container. Passing through anything else is stupid, because you're passing through a handler that the container interfaces with.