Virsh shouldn't check for driver support but rather let the backend handled this. After removing the check, I can successfully attach file-based images to a qemu VM with attach-disk. % virsh attach-disk vm2 /images/test02.img vdc --driver qemu --type disk --subdriver raw Disk attached successfully This command generates the following XML: <disk type='block' device='disk'> <driver name='qemu' type='raw'/> <source dev='/images/test02.img'/> <target dev='vdc' bus='virtio'/> <alias name='virtio-disk2'/> <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x09' function='0x0'/> </disk> Signed-off-by: Ryan Harper <ryanh(a)us.ibm.com&gt; diff --git a/tools/virsh.c b/tools/virsh.c index c0ee3ee..7bc33d8 100644 --- a/tools/virsh.c +++ b/tools/virsh.c @@ -8146,13 +8146,8 @@ cmdAttachDisk(vshControl *ctl, const vshCmd *cmd) mode = vshCommandOptString(cmd, "mode", NULL); if (driver) { - if (STREQ(driver, "file") || STREQ(driver, "tap")) { + if (STREQ(driver, "file") || STREQ(driver, "tap")) isFile = 1; - } else if (STRNEQ(driver, "phy")) { - vshError(ctl, _("No support for %s in command 'attach-disk'"), - driver); - goto cleanup; - } } if (mode) { -- Ryan Harper Software Engineer; Linux Technology Center IBM Corp., Austin, Tx ryanh(a)us.ibm.com