KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a virtualization solution for Linux that allows you to create and run virtual machines (VMs) on a single physical host. KVM uses the Linux kernel's built-in virtualization capabilities to provide an efficient and scalable virtualization solution.
To clone an existing KVM virtual machine (VM) image on a Linux system, you can use the virt-clone command, which is a command-line utility that is part of the libguestfs-tools package. virt-clone allows you to create a copy of an existing VM and customize various aspects of the clone, such as the name, MAC address, and disk size.
Here is an example of how to use virt-clone to clone an existing KVM VM:
libguestfs-tools package. On most Linux distributions, you can do this using the package manager. For example, on a Debian-based system, you can use the apt-get command:sudo apt-get install libguestfs-tools
virsh command to list the running VMs on the system:virsh list --all
This will display a list of the VMs on the system, along with their state (running or stopped) and ID number.
virt-clone command to clone the VM. For example, to clone a VM with the ID number 123, you would enter the following command:virt-clone --original 123 --name newvm --file /path/to/newvm.qcow2
This will create a new VM called newvm and save its image to the file /path/to/newvm.qcow2. You can customize various aspects of the clone by using additional options with the virt-clone command. For example, you can use the --mac option to specify a custom MAC address for the clone, or the --size option to specify a different disk size.