16.4. Virtual Machine graphical console

This window displays a virtual machine's graphical console. Para-virtualized and fully virtualized guests use different techniques to export their local virtual framebuffers, but both technologies use VNC to make them available to the Virtual Machine Manager's console window. If your virtual machine is set to require authentication, the Virtual Machine Graphical console prompts you for a password before the display appears.

Figure 16.4. Graphical console window

A note on security and VNC

VNC is considered insecure by many security experts, however, several changes have been made to enable the secure usage of VNC for virtualization on Fedora. The guest machines only listen to the local host (dom0)'s loopback address (127.0.0.1). This ensures only those with shell privileges on the host can access virt-manager and the virtual machine through VNC.

Remote administration can be performed following the instructions in Chapter 13, Remote management of virtualized guests. TLS can provide enterprise level security for managing guest and host systems.

Your local desktop can intercept key combinations (for example, Ctrl+Alt+F11) to prevent them from being sent to the guest machine. You can use virt-managersticky key' capability to send these sequences. You must press any modifier key (Ctrl or Alt) 3 times and the key you specify gets treated as active until the next non-modifier key is pressed. Then you can send Ctrl-Alt-F11 to the guest by entering the key sequence 'Ctrl Ctrl Ctrl Alt+F1'.