qvm launch

Boots a virtual machine in the background and connects to its display.

Usage

qvm launch <name> [--no-iso] [--headless]

Flags

• --no-iso: Boots from the virtual disk only, without mounting installation or driver ISOs. Use this for normal day-to-day boots after OS installation.
• --headless: Runs the VM in the background without automatically opening a SPICE display viewer (remote-viewer/virt-viewer). SPICE and RDP services remain accessible over their respective ports.

What It Does

1. Locks the VM to prevent concurrent duplicate launches.
2. Allocates the next available SPICE port (starting at 5900) and saves it to spice.port.
3. Allocates the next available RDP port (starting at 3389) and saves it to rdp.port.
4. Starts an isolated TPM 2.0 emulator daemon (swtpm).
5. Launches QEMU with KVM acceleration, UEFI firmware, VirtIO hardware, and user networking with RDP port forwarding.
6. Spawns remote-viewer or virt-viewer if installed (unless --headless is passed).

Examples

# Boot with installer ISO attached (for installation)
qvm launch win11

# Boot directly from disk (post-installation)
qvm launch win11 --no-iso

# Boot directly from disk in headless mode (no GUI viewer)
qvm launch win11 --no-iso --headless

Remote / Manual Connection

If running headless or if no viewer is installed on the host:

• SPICE viewer:

  remote-viewer spice://localhost:5900
  

• RDP / Remote Desktop:

  wlfreerdp /v:127.0.0.1:3389 /u:User