Installing and using the Python libvirt library

In this recipe we are going to install the Python libvirt module and its dependencies, create a new virtual environment, and install the iPython command shell for interactive computing.

Getting ready

For this recipe we are going to need the following:

• An Ubuntu host, with libvirt and QEMU installed and configured
• The debian.img raw image file we built in the Installing custom OS on the image with debootstrap recipe from Chapter 1, Getting Started with QEMU and KVM
• The Python 2.7 interpreter, usually provided by the python2.7 package

How to do it...

To install the Python libvirt module, the iPython utility, and to create a new virtual environment for our tests, follow these steps:

1. Install the Python development packages pip and virtualenv:

root@kvm:~# apt-get install python-pip python-dev pkg-config build-essential autoconf libvirt-dev
root@kvm:~# pip install virtualenv
Downloading/unpacking virtualenv
 Downloading virtualenv-15.1.0-py2.py3-none-any...