This copy of kvm-init-script has a bugfix from the one at http://www.pkgcore.org/~ferringb/kvm-example-conf-funtoo It also adds printing the vnc port number to the "Starting..." message. This makes it easier to know the port # to connect to with vnc viewer , etc. Usefull info when you run several vm's at the same time. the instructions are quite simple. cp kvm-init-script /etc/init.d/kvm cp kvm-conf.example /etc/conf.d/kvm.example Edit the kvm.example changing mac address, vnc port, etc. as needed. You can see I have several OTHER_ARGS= lines pre-defined, so that it is easy to switch the boot up options by just commenting/uncommenting the desired line. Hmm, this could probably be extended to accept startup options that can select which OTHER_ARGS=line to use for the startup. Save it to /etc/kvm.instance-name create the init script instance with a matching name ln -s /etc/init.d/kvm /etc/init.d/kvm.instance-name then start it; /etc/init.d/kvm.instance-name start It also responds to stop, reboot (which sends the vm the reboot signal, so it can do a proper shutdown/reboot). It can also be added to different run levels using rc-update.