Running Virt-Manager inside Windows 10 using CygWin with Shortcut on Desktop

So... this was a difficult one to figure out! You may be better off using Windows Subsystem for Linux + Bash + Virt-Manager if you can get it, but it wasn't available for my version of Windows (LTSB).

Video! >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDEAu3oPcR0

The short version of the story is:

• Install CygWin w/ virt-manager, xinit and openssh

• Configure PWDless SSH via RSA Key to KVM Host
  Note: If you place your private key inside ~/.ssh/id_rsa and make sure permissions are the following SSH will automatically try using the Private Key. To create the directory .ssh with proper permissions and create the "known_hosts" file, I ususally SSH into KVM Host and accept the host-key fingerprint manually. Then move over the Private Key and test ssh'ing into KVM Host. It shouldn't ask you for your password and just auto-login.

  chmod 400 ~/.ssh/id_rsa

  Default Username is "YouLoginName" and in windows, you can copy the file manually to the default location via 

  C:\cygwin64\home\YouLoginName\.ssh\id_rsa

• Configure XWin to autostart Virt-Manager

  cat << 'EOF' > ~/.startxwinrc
  export DISPLAY=:0.0
  virt-manager
  sleep inf
  EOF
  chmod +x ~/.startxwinrc

• Create Shortcut on Desktop: (This is the contents of my .cmd) 

  tskill.exe xwin
  
  C:\cygwin64\bin\run.exe /usr/bin/bash.exe -l -c /usr/bin/startxwin