VmChamp

Simple and fast creation of throwaway VMs on your local machine. Connect via SSH seconds.

✨ Features

• Quickly create and SSH into throwaway VMs.
• Fast boot times using minimal cloud images.
• On-demand downloads for Debian, Ubuntu, Arch, Fedora, CentOS, Rocky and Alma cloud images.
• Shell completion
• Utilizes KVM, QEMU, and libvirt.

🤔 Why?

VmChamp creates local VMs in seconds and provides SSH access.

Bypassing a lengthy manual VM setup process. Especially useful when Containers do not suffice.

🚀 Usage

RUN:

vmchamp run mytestvm
# or for more options
vmchamp run mytestvm --os debian11 --mem 256MB --disk 4GB

Which leads to output:

️👉 Creating VM: mytestvm
💻 Using OS: Debian11
📔 Memory size: 256 MiB
💽 Disk size: 4 GiB

...output omitted...

⣷ Waiting for network...

...output omitted...

user@testvm:~$

Add Shell completion

Add the following to your .bashrc or .zshrc file

# For BASH
source <(vmchamp --completion bash)

# For ZSH
source <(vmchamp --completion zsh)

🛠️ Installation

TESTED on: Ubuntu 22.04; Debian 12

For details see Installation Guide

🔧 Prerequisites:

• Your machine supports virtualization with KVM

# Installing requirements
sudo apt update
sudo apt install qemu-kvm libvirt-daemon-system

# Download latest VmChamp:
wget -qO- https://api.github.com/repos/zwoefler/VmChamp/releases/latest | grep "browser_download_url" | cut -d '"' -f 4 | wget -i - -O vmchamp

# Install VmChamp rootless
chmod +x vmchamp
mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
mv vmchamp ~/.local/bin/

export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/.local/bin"

vmchamp run testvm

🏗️ Build

To build VmChamp run:

./build.sh <version> <output dir>
# ./build.sh 1.2.3 ~/build/

Output dir defaults to ./build/.