oVirt viewer for OSX

[TeeJayHoward]

By default, oVirt uses spice to display a VMs screen. I've had nothing but problems trying to get spice to work with OSX. VNC is an option, but manually copying the data out of the downloaded .vv files into a VNC viewer before the link times out is even more of a pain. I stumbled across a post online which I found incredibly helpful. It uses OSX's built-in VNC client to connect to VMs which have VNC set as one of the available console types. I'm reposting it here in the hopes that it'll help someone else.

vi /usr/local/bin/virt-viewer.py

Copy the following to that file.

#!/usr/bin/python
#
# oVirt Engine 3.3 will send a user requesting a console a little
# ini-style file with the host/port/password information necessary
# for connecting to a VM via VNC. On a Mac, that file (typically
# named console.vv) is useless as-is. This script parses console.vv
# and passes a vnc:// URL to /usr/bin/open.
#
# A reasonable console.vv file will look something like this:
#
# [virt-viewer]
# type=vnc
# host=your.host.com
# port=5907
# password=ZOrRmRBNlzaK
# delete-this-file=1
# title=VNC
#
# From that file, this script will create a vnc url. The Mac
# Screen Sharing application will accept an old-style URL with
# a username:password prepended to the hostname; oVirt doesn't
# provide a username, so we leave that blank. In the example
# above, the resulting URL would be
#
#   vnc://:ZOrRmRBNlzaK@your.host.com:5907
#
# Since ovirt-assigned vnc passwords expire after 120 seconds, this
# script by default will delete the ini file after parsing it.
#
# ======================================================================

import ConfigParser, argparse, subprocess, sys, os.path

# open(1) knows how to deal with various file and string types
opener = "/usr/bin/open"
# define the correct section name in console.vv
header = "virt-viewer"
# the default location of the ini file; this can be overridden
# by passing the filename to the script
defaultvv = os.path.expandvars( "${HOME}/Downloads/console.vv" )

# set up the ArgumentParser
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(
  description='Parse and execute virt-viewer VNC ini file',
  epilog='The console.vv file must have a [virt-viewer] heading, a type=vnc entry, and entries for host, port, and password to parse correctly.')
parser.add_argument( '-k', '--keep', action='store_true',
  help='keep vvfile after parsing (default is to delete it)')
parser.add_argument( 'vvfile',
  nargs='?',
  default=defaultvv,
  help='console.vv file from oVirt (default: ~/Downloads/console.vv)')
args = parser.parse_args()

# make sure the file is readable
if not os.path.isfile(args.vvfile):
  sys.stderr.write( args.vvfile + " is not readable or doesn't exist.\n" )
  parser.print_usage(file=sys.stderr)
  sys.exit()

### parse the config file
c = ConfigParser.ConfigParser()
try:
  c.read( args.vvfile )
except ConfigParser.Error:
  sys.stderr.write( args.vvfile + " doesn't parse correctly.\n" )
  sys.stderr.write( "Are you sure you got it from the right place?\n" )
  sys.exit()

# make sure we have a virt-viewer section
try:
  c.has_section( header )
except ConfigParser.NoSectionError:
  sys.stderr.write( "Cannot find necessary [" + header + "] section.\n" )
  sys.exit()

# make sure that, within the virt-viewer section, there's a type=vnc
# option
try:
  c.has_option( header, 'type' )
except ConfigParser.NoOptionError:
  sys.stderr.write( "Cannot find necessary 'type' option.\n" )
  sys.exit()

if not 'vnc' == c.get( header, 'type' ):
  sys.stderr.write( "'type' option option is not 'vnc'.\n" )
  sys.exit()

# grab the hostname.
try:
  rhost = c.get( header, 'host' )
except ConfigParser.NoOptionError:
  sys.stderr.write( "Cannot find host definition.\n" )
  sys.exit()

# grab the port value, make sure it's an integer, and test that it's
# roughly in the correct range (5900-5950) for VNC sessions
try:
  strport = c.get( header, 'port' )
except ConfigParser.NoOptionError:
  sys.stderr.write( "Cannot find port definition.\n" )
  sys.exit()

try:
  rport = int(strport)
except ValueError:
  sys.stderr.write( "The listed port is not an integer.\n" )
  sys.exit()

if rport < 5900:
  sys.stderr.write( "The port (" + strport + ") is an unexpected number.\n" )
  sys.exit()
if rport > 5950:
  sys.stderr.write( "The port (" + strport + ") is an unexpected number.\n" )
  sys.exit()

# grab the password
try:
  rpass = c.get( header, 'password' )
except ConfigParser.NoOptionError:
  sys.stderr.write( "Cannot find password definition.\n" )
  sys.exit()

# build old-style URL with password prepended to the hostname
vncurl = "vnc://:%s@%s:%d" % ( rpass, rhost, rport )

# remove the vvfile unless user has specfically asked to keep it
if not args.keep:
  os.remove( args.vvfile )

# whew. we got here. now launch the opener app.
subprocess.call( [opener, vncurl] )

#
# eof
#

Make the file executable.

chmod +x /usr/local/bin/virt-viewer.py

That's it. Done. Whenever you download a .vv file, you can now run virt-viewer.py from terminal. If you wanted to get fancy, I'm sure you could associate the .vv file with the python script... But this is good enough for me!

edit: Thought I should throw up a link to the GitHub page for the original script, in case it's been modified since that thread started. So... HERE.