On 01/30/2014 03:40 AM, Bouabid Mohamed Amine wrote: Suffice to say libvirt-cim hasn't been very active for a number of years now. You can look through the monthly archives if you want: http://www.redhat.com/archives/libvirt-cim/index.html As such, the libvirt-cim provider does not have as rich an XML parsing as virsh does since virsh is developed along with features/commands added to libvirt. Not keeping up causes numerous bugs along the way where new XML is introduced, but libvirt-cim doesn't know/recognize it so when it goes to write out the XML again it may not "keep" the newer XML. There were some patches posted last month to try and help that situation out, but they haven't been accepted. You are certainly welcome to look at the code and provide patches. I assume some amount of git and code reading experience: git clone git://libvirt.org/libvirt-cim.git libvirt-cim I then use things like 'cscope' in order to peruse sources. Looking up "DefineSystem" brings me to the 'define_system()' API which calls 'create_system()', then connect_and_create()', and eventually 'virDomainDefineXML()'. Most API's end up calling some 'virDomain*()' or 'virConnect*()' API. Because the code is older and must build back to an older version of libvirt, some of the newer API's aren't utilized. There are instances in the code using LIBVIR_VERSION_NUMBER. No relationship with virsh at all. Is there something specific that virsh *dumpxml is providing that you're not seeing perhaps in either of the two classes you referenced? I'm assuming yes, but you have to be a bit more specific as the dartboard is large. As already been answered. Nope. virsh is a "CLI" command of sorts for libvirt. libvirt-cim is a "CLI" command of sorts for a CIM based application. I'm not the most proficient CIM developer and far from an expert. Currently activity is minimal with a few IBM folks still chipping away at mostly minor point changes. John