We have all been in this situation. We need quick access to hardware console of machine to debug nasty hang (kernel oops in my example). But now-days, we are all in the cloud, and that machine is libvirt's kvm. I just need access to VNC console, and installing whole virt-manager seems like overkill. So, let's see if we can make it somewhat easier and quicker.
First ssh into your host machine (garak in this example, tunneling some VNC ports along the way:
dpavlin@x200:~$ ssh $(seq 5900 5904 | awk '{ print "-L "$1":localhost:"$1 }') garak
If you have more than 4 vms running on this machine, increase 5904 above.
Then, using virtsh list all domains, and examine vnc port:
virsh # list Id Name State ---------------------------------------------------- 1 stargate running 2 treca running 15 hroug running 16 close running virsh # vncdisplay close :2Now, back on laptop, in another terminal start vnc viewer:
dpavlin@x200:~$ vncviewer :2Since close didn't respond to reboot, reset or shutdown commands in virsh, I opted to kill kvm process and start it again with start close. Quick alternative to virt-manager installation.