Best practices to install Linux Guests in Ravada

Disk volumes

It is advisable to have at least 2 disk volumes: one for the Operative System and another one for the SWAP partition. Make sure both are selected in the new machine form.

The Operative system will go to /dev/vda and the swap drive will be in /dev/vdb. Configure them properly in the installation process.

Installing software

You should at least install these applications:

  • qemu-guest-agent

  • acpi

Energy setup

Configure the system so if the power off button is pressed the computer is shut down.

Automatic or unattended upgrades

Upgrades may cause the disk volumes to grow unexpectedly. They should be disabled.

For Debian, Ubuntu and similar systems:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure unattended-upgrades

Other Linux flavours may have similar tools. Contributions welcome.

Limit systemd log size

Thanks to Jordi Lino for this tip .

You can change the systemd configuration to limit the journal log disk usage (100 MB for example). Edit the /etc/systemd/journald.conf file and un-comment (remove # at the beginning) the line #SystemMaxUse= and change it to SystemMaxUse=100M.

Read this for more information.