I manage libvirtd on a few remote machines, and my security policies require me to disable root login via SSH. Up to this point, I've been using root due to the systems being in staging, but this is the final step before they're moved to production. What is the current proscribed method of connecting virt-manager or virsh to a remote system with a non-root account? I keep getting "authentication failed: no agent is available to authenticate" with a user that is in the kvm and qemu groups on the systems I've tried using the ssh transport.

On Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 05:26:20PM -0500, Dan Mossor wrote: > I manage libvirtd on a few remote machines, and my security policies require > me to disable root login via SSH. Up to this point, I've been using root due > to the systems being in staging, but this is the final step before they're > moved to production. > > What is the current proscribed method of connecting virt-manager or virsh to > a remote system with a non-root account? I keep getting "authentication > failed: no agent is available to authenticate" with a user that is in the > kvm and qemu groups on the systems I've tried using the ssh transport. This guide ought to help you set it up http://wiki.libvirt.org/page/SSHPolicyKitSetup Regards, Daniel

On 06/12/2015 12:14 PM, Dan Mossor wrote: > On 06/12/2015 03:48 AM, Daniel P. Berrange wrote: >> On Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 05:26:20PM -0500, Dan Mossor wrote: >>> I manage libvirtd on a few remote machines, and my security policies >>> require >>> me to disable root login via SSH. Up to this point, I've been using >>> root due >>> to the systems being in staging, but this is the final step before >>> they're >>> moved to production. >>> >>> What is the current proscribed method of connecting virt-manager or >>> virsh to >>> a remote system with a non-root account? I keep getting "authentication >>> failed: no agent is available to authenticate" with a user that is >>> in the >>> kvm and qemu groups on the systems I've tried using the ssh transport. >> >> This guide ought to help you set it up >> >> http://wiki.libvirt.org/page/SSHPolicyKitSetup >> > Ok, so I finally got it working. > > The SSHPolicyKitSetup page at the libvirt wiki states right at the top > that "As of polkit 0.106 the .pkla format is no more, and these > configuration files must be written in Javascript." > > Further down the page, it reinforces this statement with "The > information in this section is obsolete; see the top of this page for > more information." > > However, both of those statements are incorrect. Following the > directions provided by [1] from the wiki page produced zero results - > the operation still failed with "authentication failed: no agent is > available to authenticate" when attempting to connect. [...] It sounds like you're volunteering to update the wiki page :-) (Seriously, auto account creation is disabled on the wiki, but Dan Berrange has the necessary credentials to create an account for you.)