CLI

Disclaimer

The following list is not exhaustive, and may be out of date.

The most up to date reference is always the code itself, as well as the generated CLI help (via cargo run -- --help).

  • --processors <COUNT>: The number of processors. Defaults to 1.
  • --memory <SIZE>: The VM's memory size. Defaults to 1GB.
  • --hv: Exposes Hyper-V enlightenments and VMBus support.
  • --uefi: Boot using mu_msvm UEFI
  • --pcat: Boot using the Microsoft Hyper-V PCAT BIOS
  • --disk file:<DISK>: Exposes a single disk over VMBus. You must also pass --hv. The DISK argument can be:
    • A flat binary disk image
    • A VHD file with an extension of .vhd (Windows host only)
    • A VHDX file with an extension of .vhdx (Windows host only)
  • --nic: Exposes a NIC using the Consomme user-mode NAT.
  • --virtio-console: Enables a virtio serial device (via the MMIO transport) for Linux console access instead of COM1.
  • --virtio-console-pci: Uses the PCI transport for the virtio serial console.
  • --gfx: Enable a graphical console over VNC (see below)
  • --virtio-9p: Expose a virtio 9p file system. Uses the format tag:root_path, e.g. myfs:C:\\. The file system can be mounted in a Linux guest using mount -t 9p -o trans=virtio tag /mnt/point. You can specify this argument multiple times to create multiple file systems.
  • --virtio-fs: Expose a virtio-fs file system. The format is the same as --virtio-9p. The file system can be mounted in a Linux guest using mount -t virtiofs tag /mnt/point. You can specify this argument multiple times to create multiple file systems.

And serial devices can each be configured to be relayed to different endpoints:

  • --com1/com2/virtio-serial <none|console|stderr|listen=PATH|listen=tcp:IP:PORT>
    • none: Serial output is dropped.
    • console: Serial input is read and output is written to the console.
    • stderr: Serial output is written to stderr.
    • listen=PATH: A named pipe (on Windows) or Unix socket (on Linux) is set up to listen on the given path. Serial input and output is relayed to this pipe/socket.
    • listen=tcp:IP:PORT: As with listen=PATH, but listen for TCP connections on the given IP address and port. Typically IP will be 127.0.0.1, to restrict connections to the current host.