Hyperkit

Command line interface

Create

Create a virtual machine. If called with no arguments it will use your default hypervisor to create a new virtual machine with your default distribution, release, architecture with default configuration:

hyperkit create

By default it will use VirtualBox to create a recent 64-bit Ubuntu VM.

usage: hyperkit create [-h] [--username USERNAME] [--password PASSWORD]

[--public-key PUBLIC_KEY] [--key-id KEY_ID] [--memory MEMORY] [--cpus CPUS] [--image IMAGE] [--options OPTIONS] [name] [distro] [release] [arch]

positional arguments:

name The name of the vm to create distro The name of the distro to use release The release of the distro to use arch The architecture of the distro to use

optional arguments:

-h, --help	show this help message and exit
--username USERNAME
	The username of the initial user
--password PASSWORD
	The password for the initial user
--public-key PUBLIC_KEY
	A specific public key to be added to the initial user's authorized list
--key-id KEY_ID
	The name of a key in your ~/.ssh folder
--memory MEMORY
	The amount of memory for the new virtual machine
--cpus CPUS	The number of cpus for the new virtual machine
--image IMAGE	A file path or url to an image to use instead of the distro's default
--options OPTIONS
	hypervisor specific options to pass to the new VM

Authentication

The following options affect how you can log into the created VM:

--username        the username of the initial user (default:
--password        the password for the initial user
--public-key      a specific public key to be added to the initial user's allowed list
--key-id          the name of a key in your ~/.ssh folder, to be added to the initial user's allowed list

If no authentication options are provided, hyperkit will use the first public key loaded into the running ssh agent, if there is one running.

If no password is provided, then password authentication will not be possible, and a public key must be used.

Hardware options

--memory

the amount of RAM for the VM, in Megabytes

--cpus