22.4 Creating a Virtual Machine from a Configuration File

The virsh create command can take as an argument the name of a configuration file on which to base the creation of a new virtual machine. The configuration file uses XML format. Arguably the easiest way to create a configuration file is to dump out the configuration of an existing virtual machine and modify it for the new one. This can be achieved using the virsh dumpxml command. The following command outputs the configuration data for a virtual machine domain named MyFedora to a file named MyFedora.xml:

# virsh dumpxml MyFedora > MyFedora.xml

Once the file has been generated, load it into an editor to review and change the settings for the new virtual machine.

At the very least, the <name>, <uuid> and image file path <source file> must be changed in order to avoid conflict with the virtual machine from which the configuration was taken. In the case of the UUID, this line can simply be deleted from...