== Overview ==

[[ http://spice-space.org/download.html | Spice ]] is an alternative to vnc offering high performance graphics and audio ideal for desktop virtualization.

== Spice in qemu on Ubuntu ==

Spice is not in the Ubuntu main repository, while qemu-kvm is.  Therefore, qemu-kvm cannot be linked against spice.  Instead, the 'qemu-kvm-spice' package is built from the qemu-linaro sources.  To use spice, you must run 'kvm-spice', not 'kvm'.  Since qemu-linaro is based on qemu.git, which by default chooses tcg (unaccelerated qemu), you must use the '-enable-kvm' flag to get accelerated kvm.  An example command line would be:

qemu-kvm-spice -enable-kvm -m 2G -drive file=x.img,if=virtio,cache=none -vga qxl -spice port=5900,disable-ticketing [...]

== Spice in libvirt on Ubuntu ==

To use spice in libvirt, use an .xml such as that at http://people.canonical.com/~serge/spice.xml.  If you have a working vnc-based guest defined in libvirt, and want to switch it to use spice, use the emulator line:

{{{
    <emulator>/usr/bin/kvm-spice</emulator>
}}}

and replace the graphics and videos sections with:

{{{
    <graphics type='spice' port='5930' tlsPort='-1' autoport='no'/>
    <video>
      <model type='qxl' vram='65536' heads='1'/>
      <alias name='video0'/>
      <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x02' function='0x0'/>
    </video>
}}}