Make KVM Use a NIC in Bridge Mode

I wanted to start learning Kubernetes.
So I thought I’d spin up a Ubuntu VM to use as my sacrificial guinea pig.

While the normal NAT mode works well enough for most of my networking needs, I wanted the Ubuntu VM to show up and work as a machine on my host’s network.¹
I have two network cards on my desktop and wanted to allocate one of them to this VM.
I wanted a passthrough, where the guest OS would see the NIC and then have exclusive access to it.
When I tried doing that, KVM complained that it could not do this with PCI devices.

Hmm, that had me stumped a bit.
And then I learnt about attaching my VM’s NIC directly to a physical interface.
What I needed to do was use Macvtap as my network source in the VM’s settings.
It then prompted me for my NIC’s device name, which I gave it, courtesy a little spelunking through ifconfig’s output.

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And then once I began my Ubuntu VM install, it detected my NIC and then let me assign an ip that I use on my local network.
For all intents and purposes the VM now appears as just another machine on my network ala my Pis.

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