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Show HN: Lightweight tool for managing Linux virtual machines

133 points by ccheshirecat

by lioeters

2 subcomments

by ccheshirecat

0 subcomment

For clarity: Hypr Pte. Ltd. (UEN 202520273N), AS211747 HYPR-NET, is an infra-focused startup working on microVMs, virtualization, and novel approaches to infrastructure. We are independently managed and only active in the infrastructure space; other accounts or projects are unrelated.
Infuze was ours but has since been shut down so we can focus fully on our own architecture. There has never been any scam, nor anything remotely related to one.
The Show HN post about the lightweight VM manager is unrelated to any cloud business. It started as a quick personal tool and unexpectedly resonated with people, so I iterated on it the same day. It’s just a minimal Go wrapper around libvirt, not connected to our core work.

by myflash13

1 subcomments

The readme keeps using the word “manage” but what does it actually do? Does it create and start new VMs? Using dockerfiles? On the local host or other hosts? I don’t understand WTF this thing does.

by k_bx

3 subcomments

While I am using cockpit every time I need to remotely manage the machines, I couldn't get it to log me in via something other than user's login/password, which are not that safe, and it listens to 0.0.0.0 by default too.
So I have to ssh into machine, start cockpit service, use it, and then stop the cockpit.socket once I finish.
Would be great to have something which has its own users/passwords (to have strong password in bitwarden) and doesn't listen to 0.0.0.0 by default. If it's also lightweight – even better!

by athrowaway3z

0 subcomment

For something as simple as this, is next.js even worth it?
There is something to be said for it because LLM's having been trained on its structure, but I'm having decent success stripping out all dependencies except tsc.

by todotask2

0 subcomment

How do you mount host's folder? My search for a VM that will work with Vite which can detect file changes on the host, or there is not answer?
Tart VM is interesting but still have the same issue.

by imiric

2 subcomments

Hey, thanks for sharing. As someone who uses QEMU via rudimentary shell scripts, this looks interesting.
Unfortunately, I'm reluctant to trust a 26KLOC vibe-coded app[1] for something like this, so I'll pass.
But if a polished React/Next.js app, with a CLI, HTTP/WebSocket API, authentication, and libvirt integration, truly took you a couple of hours to produce, and it solves your problem, that's a commendable achievement. I'm not sure if I should be praising you or the LLM, but it's notable nonetheless.
[1]: https://github.com/ccheshirecat/flint/commit/eb90847db9da56c...

by illegally

1 subcomments

You forgot to credit the AI who helped you generate this project in a couple of hours ;)

by jauntywundrkind

1 subcomments

It'd be cool to see a nice UI (like this) atop something a little better built out & defined like systemd-nspawn. Like Quadlet for containers, Nspawn for VMs is a nice base with tons of great capabilities & very standard management patterns. There's nice .nspawn files and drop ins, where config lies, and (semi) standard paths for mounts and machines. Having that stable standard base would raise my interest & confidence a lot.
This recent guide covers a ton of nitty gritty, down to baking your own vm images & doing everything by hand. But by half way through, it builda to using the nice machinectl cli that is the real meat of the experience. https://quantum5.ca/2025/03/22/whirlwind-tour-of-systemd-nsp...

by nodesocket

0 subcomment