If you’re running a home lab and tired of manually provisioning VMs, I’ve got something for you. I recently published a GitHub repository that demonstrates how to deploy Ubuntu 24.04 LTS cloud images on libvirt/QEMU using OpenTofu (the open-source Terraform fork) with the dmacvicar/libvirt provider v0.9.1.
Why This Approach?
Most infrastructure-as-code providers abstract away the underlying platform details. dmacvicar/libvirt after version 0.9.1, takes a different philosophy: it models the libvirt XML schemas directly instead of hiding them behind abstractions. This gives you full access to libvirt features while maintaining the benefits of declarative infrastructure management.
What’s Included
The repository provides a complete, opinionated setup with:
- SSH hardening by default — password authentication disabled, SSH key-based access only
- Automated provisioning — the included
autostart.shscript handles initialization, formatting, validation, planning, and applying - Cloud-init integration — customizable templates for user data, SSH config, and network setup
- Clean teardown — helper scripts for destroying infrastructure and cleaning up artifacts
Quick Start
Prerequisites are straightforward: libvirt, qemu/kvm, and OpenTofu installed on your host. The workflow is simple:
- Edit
variables.tfto set your hostname, user, SSH port, and cloud image path - Run
./autostart.shto initialize and deploy - Wait ~20 seconds for DHCP, then verify with
tofu output network_interfaces
The deployment waits for DHCP via time_sleep.wait_for_dhcp and queries interfaces using the libvirt_domain.example resource.
Perfect For
This setup is ideal if you’re:
- Building a personal lab environment for testing and development
- Learning infrastructure-as-code with a real-world use case
- Want reproducible VM deployments without the overhead of larger orchestration tools
Check out the github repository ebal/opentofu-libvirt-ubuntu2404 for the full documentation, including troubleshooting tips and security considerations. Licensed under GPL-2.0, so feel free to fork and adapt it to your needs.
Repository: ebal/opentofu-libvirt-ubuntu2404