If you are getting the error "Host does not support any virtualization options" when trying to create a virtual machine on Virtual Machine Manager(Virt-Manager) this means your cpu doesn't support any virtualization, but what about when your cpu supports virtualization and virtualbox works but virt-manager doesn't. Follow the steps below to troubleshoot this error
What does CPU Virtualization do?
Virtualization technology allows you to run multiple instances(Virtual machines) on your system at the same time, so if you want to run multiple Operating Systems at the same time you must have a cpu that support Virtualization.
How to Check if my CPU supports virtualization?
First thing you need to do is to check if your cpu supports virtualization, you can check by a simple command or by going into your bios and check whether the cpu virtualization option is turned on or off, if it's set to off then simply turn in on, make sure to save changes and reboot.
To check simply type the following command, this command will show you if your cpu supports virtualization
LC_ALL=C lscpu | grep Virtualization
The output you get in the terminal should look like the output shown on the screenshot above.
My CPU supports virtualization and bios option is on, but i'm still getting the same error "Host does not support any virtualization options", this happens when you don't have qemu-kvm installed on your system, to install qemu-kvm simply run the command
To install qemu-kvm
sudo apt install qemu-kvmTo Install Virtual Machine Manager(virt-manager)
sudo apt install virt-managerThe commands above will work on Ubuntu/Debian based systems, however you need to make sure qemu-kvm and virt-manager are installed on your system, once you have installed virt-manager and qemu-kvm and enabled the virtualization option on bios you should be good to go and create a virtual machine.
How to create a virtual machine on Virt-Manager
Step 1 - Run Virt-Manager
Launch Virtual Machine Manager, and click to the button " Create a new virtual machine" as shown in the screenshot below
Step 2 - Choose the type of Installation
In this step you need to choose the type of installation you want to install the OS on your virtual machine.
Local Installation media (ISO image or CDROM) - Allows you to select your own iso that is located on your computer
Network Install (HTTP/HTTPS/FTP)- Allows you to install an OS via a direct URL
Network Boot (PXE) - Allows you to install an OS via your network card, so your network card acts like a boot device.
Importing existing disk image - Allows you to import your own disk image (qcow,raw)
In this tutorial, i'm going to show you how to create the virtual machine via ISO file, select first option and then click Forward
Next, click to Browse button to select the ISO file and then click Forward
When Virtual Machine Manager doesn't recognize the ISO type, it shows an error like this, to fix this error you can uncheck the option " Automatically detect from the installation media / source"
Then choose the operating system you are trying to install, to do this uncheck the option below, and choose the OS name on the box below where it says "None detected", it should look like this
Now all you need to do is to click Forward and the error should be gone
In this step you need to set Ram and CPU, this depends what OS you are trying to run, so make sure you give enough ram and cpu for the OS to run smoothly, then click Forward
Next, you need to set how much storage you want the virtual machine to have, then click Forward
This is the final step, in this window you can set the vm name, customize the configuration before creating the vm and also you can select the network device.
Note: You can also skip this step if you don't want to customize anything, simply don't check the box and click the apply button.
To customize configuration simply check the box and click Finish
Once you click the Finish button it takes you to this window from where you can customize any configuration such as : adding another hardware, adding more ram , changing network device and much more options.
Once you are done with the changes, click the apply button to save the configurations you made, then simply click Begin installation button in order to start creating the virtual machine.
Give it some time for the virtual machine to be created. Once the virtual machine is created the system will be booted automatically and you should see your OS welcome screen.
Conclusion
In this tutorial we explained how to fix the error that doesn't let you to create a virtual machine when your cpu supports virtualization, and also we explained step by step how to create a vm using Virtual Machine Manager on Linux.
