Regarding the eth1 interface, I am not sure why the autostart.xml could affect bringing up eth1. Before I made changes to the autostart.xml or renamed the folder completely, the VMs have all interfaces installed: eth0, eth1, virbr0 (even though the virbr0 and its iptable rules seem to be a bit difficult to get rid of). After I renamed the autostart folder, I was able to remove the virbr0 interface and iptable rules, but the eth1 can't be brought up successfully as described in the opening post.

Jake

On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 6:31 AM, Cole Robinson <crobinso@redhat.com> wrote:

On 03/07/2011 04:32 PM, Jake Xu wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Recently, I have been using libvirt to create virtual machines on ESX
> servers. It has been very well until to the point where I couldn't find any
> way to disable/remove the virbr0 interface properly.
>
> We use static configuration for VMs on ESX so we do not need to use virbr0
> interface and we do not want libvirt to configure iptables as a result of
> the newly created virbr0 interface.
>
> I have tried to remove/rename the /etc/libvirt/qemu/networks/autostart.xml
> file, and that prevents virbr0 being installed.
>

Here is how to properly remove steps virbr0 (the default virtual network):

http://wiki.libvirt.org/page/FAQ#How_can_I_make_libvirt_stop_using_iptables.3F

> However, that also seems to prevent the second interface eth1 being
> configured properly. After libvirt defines a VM, eth0 and eht1 are both
> installed, but only eth0 is configured properly.
>
> The eth1 does not appear in the /etc/sysconfig/network-script/ifcfg-xxx
> file. It seems to me that the 'autostart.xml' file interrupts the
> configuration of the eth1 interface.
>

Not sure why autostarting a virtual network would also bring up eth1, so
no ideas there.

- Cole