mvirt

Warning

This project was vibe-coded with Claude Code. Not for production use!

Lightweight VM manager in Rust as a modern alternative to libvirt.

Features

• cloud-hypervisor as hypervisor (instead of QEMU)
• gRPC API for easy integration
• TUI with ratatui
• SQLite for persistent state
• Statically linked with musl for easy deployment

Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                        mvirt (CLI/TUI)                      │
└───────┬─────────────┬─────────────┬─────────────┬───────────┘
        │             │             │             │ gRPC
        ▼             ▼             ▼             ▼
┌───────────┐  ┌───────────┐  ┌───────────┐  ┌───────────┐
│ mvirt-vmm │  │ mvirt-zfs │  │ mvirt-net │  │ mvirt-log │
│   :50051  │  │   :50053  │  │   :50054  │  │   :50052  │
└─────┬─────┘  └─────┬─────┘  └─────┬─────┘  └───────────┘
      │              │              │
      ▼              ▼              ▼
┌───────────┐  ┌───────────┐  ┌───────────┐
│ cloud-    │  │    ZFS    │  │   TAP     │
│ hypervisor│  │   Pool    │  │  Devices  │
└───────────┘  └───────────┘  └───────────┘

Components

Directory	Port	Description
mvirt-cli/	-	CLI and TUI client
mvirt-vmm/	50051	VM manager daemon
mvirt-log/	50052	Centralized audit logging service
mvirt-zfs/	50053	ZFS storage management daemon
mvirt-net/	50054	Virtual networking daemon
mvirt-one/	-	µOS - Minimal Linux for MicroVMs
proto/	-	gRPC protocol definitions

Prerequisites

# Rust with musl target
rustup target add x86_64-unknown-linux-musl

# Build tools
sudo apt install build-essential musl-tools

# For mvirt-one (Kernel/UKI)
sudo apt install flex bison libncurses-dev libssl-dev libelf-dev bc dwarves
sudo apt install systemd-ukify systemd-boot-efi genisoimage

Build

# Build everything (Rust + UKI)
make

# Rust binaries only
make release

# mvirt-one only (UKI for direct boot)
make one

# Build in Docker (no local dependencies needed)
make docker

# Check build dependencies
make check

Development

# Debug build
cargo build

# Start daemon (development)
cargo run --bin mvirt-vmm -- --data-dir ./tmp

# Start CLI/TUI
cargo run --bin mvirt

# Tests
cargo test --workspace

# Formatting & linting
cargo fmt && cargo clippy --workspace

Directory Structure

mvirt/
├── Cargo.toml              # Workspace
├── Makefile                # Build orchestration
├── Dockerfile              # Build environment
├── proto/                  # gRPC protocol definitions
├── mvirt-cli/              # CLI + TUI
├── mvirt-vmm/              # VM manager daemon
├── mvirt-log/              # Audit logging service
├── mvirt-zfs/              # ZFS storage daemon
├── mvirt-net/              # Networking daemon
├── mvirt-one/              # µOS - Minimal Linux for MicroVMs
│   └── src/                # Rust init (PID 1)
├── docs/                   # Documentation
└── images/                 # VM disk images (not in git)

Output

File	Description
target/x86_64-unknown-linux-musl/release/mvirt	CLI binary
target/x86_64-unknown-linux-musl/release/mvirt-vmm	VM manager daemon
target/x86_64-unknown-linux-musl/release/mvirt-log	Logging service
target/x86_64-unknown-linux-musl/release/mvirt-zfs	ZFS storage daemon
target/x86_64-unknown-linux-musl/release/mvirt-net	Networking daemon
mvirt-one/target/mvirt-one.efi	Bootable UKI (kernel + initramfs)

Documentation

• Getting Started - Quick start guide
• Architecture - How components work together
• Development Guide - Build system, workflow
• Kernel Configuration - Kernel build, adding drivers
• Networking - vNICs, IP addressing, gateway model
• Storage - Templates, volumes, snapshots
• Service Ports - All service ports and configuration

License

Apache-2.0