Quick Start
Prerequisites
- bcvk installed (see Installation Guide)
- podman
- QEMU/KVM
- A bootc container image
Your First VM
bcvk ephemeral run-ssh quay.io/fedora/fedora-bootc:42
This starts a VM and automatically SSHs into it. The VM terminates when you exit the SSH session.
Ephemeral VMs
# Start a background VM with auto-cleanup
bcvk ephemeral run -d --rm -K --name mytestvm quay.io/fedora/fedora-bootc:42
# SSH into it
bcvk ephemeral ssh mytestvm
Creating Disk Images
# Raw disk image
bcvk to-disk quay.io/centos-bootc/centos-bootc:stream10 /path/to/disk.img
# qcow2 format
bcvk to-disk --format qcow2 quay.io/fedora/fedora-bootc:42 /path/to/fedora.qcow2
# Custom size
bcvk to-disk --size 20G quay.io/fedora/fedora-bootc:42 /path/to/large-disk.img
Persistent VMs with libvirt
# Create and start
bcvk libvirt run --name my-server quay.io/fedora/fedora-bootc:42
# Manage lifecycle
bcvk libvirt ssh my-server
bcvk libvirt stop my-server
bcvk libvirt start my-server
bcvk libvirt list
bcvk libvirt rm my-server
Image Management
# List bootc images
bcvk images list
Resource Configuration
# Ephemeral VM
bcvk ephemeral run --memory 4096 --cpus 4 --name bigvm quay.io/fedora/fedora-bootc:42
# libvirt VM
bcvk libvirt run --name webserver --memory 8192 --cpus 8 --disk-size 50G quay.io/centos-bootc/centos-bootc:stream10