[nmglug] QEMU/KVM; Thunar as root?

[Ted Pomeroy]

Tom, have you tried invoking thunar from a root terminal. Also you might
check the man oh co or sync to see if you can show progress in one of those
as you make copies. Just a thought. Ted P.

On Thu, Aug 8, 2019, 1:02 PM Tom Ashcraft <trailerdog234 at comcast.net> wrote:

> I've got Debian 10 XFCE installed to and running from a USB stick.
> Inside that I have two identical Debian minimal-install server VMs that
> run under QEMU/KVM behind NAT so that I can have the two talk to each
> other as a network inside the single computer.  This for purposes of
> safely practicing and experimenting with things like SSH keys and
> WireGuard without external network or internet access.  All, well and
> good; works great as long as I stick to the same computer and nic with
> which I created the VMs.
>
> The problem is that I have limited storage for snapshots and clones so
> that currently, if I screw something up or switch computers, experience
> indicates that I have to create new individual VMs by installing from
> scratch to start again clean. That takes a long time.
>
> So I'm thinking that before I waste too much more time reinventing the
> wheel every time I go 'round, that I ought to be able to copy clean
> unused images of my two VMs on another USB stick so that I can just
> conveniently delete and replace as required.
>
> First question:  I ought to be able to create an elastically sized VM
> with QEMU/KVM in a manner similar to how dynamically allocated storage
> works in VirtualBox so that the image I copy across different USB sticks
> can be relatively small and quick to copy?
>
> Second question:  At present I must copy via command line as root or
> with sudo as Thunar GUI file manager won't give me permission by any
> means I can discover.  I'd like to use Thunar so I can get some visual
> feedback about copy progress.  I ought to be able to run Thunar from the
> desktop as root somehow, right?
>
> As I write I *think* my old laptop with USB 2.0 is somewhere in the
> midst of copying an 8.0 GB image, but it keeps timing-out into
> lockscreen, and for all I know something has gone wrong.  The USB sticks
> are warm as a cup of coffee, but the cursor in the terminal is just
> sitting there without blinking and it's all taking way too long:
>
> tom at debian10xfceUSB: /var/lib/libvirt/images$ sudo cp generic-2.qcow2
> /media/tom/C58A-66EE/
>
> All hints and advice are welcome.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Tom
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> nmglug mailing list
> nmglug at lists.nmglug.org
> http://lists.nmglug.org/listinfo.cgi/nmglug-nmglug.org
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.nmglug.org/pipermail/nmglug-nmglug.org/attachments/20190808/dda22d16/attachment.html>