On 08/09/2012 09:42 AM, Shradha Shah wrote: (This is a very long answer to a very short question, but that's kind of in my nature, and hopefully the extra background will be helpful :-) Well, both are actually remembered, but in this case the definition of "active XML" isn't quite what you would think. The active xml is whatever was last written to /var/lib/libvirt/network/${net-name}.xml, and the inactive XML is what was last written to /etc/libvirt/qemu/network/${net-name}.xml. When a network is defined, the config is put into /etc, (and saved in netobj->def) and when it's started, it's put into /var. If you edit a network's config while it is active, the new config is stored into /etc (and netobj->newDef) (i.e. that will be the "new definition" the next time the network is started), but /var (and netobj->def) are left unchanged. When libvirtd is restarted, the "active XML" from /var is put into netobj->def, and the "inactive (or next) XML" is again put in netobj->newDef. In the qemu driver, live modifications to the state of the domain are saved in domobj->def as well as /var/lib/libvirt/qemu, but up until now no live changes to the network state have been supported (that's about to change, but that's another story). Even in the case of the forwardPfs, auto-populating the forwardIfs isn't really changing the state of the network, it's just filling in some state that's already there. In a way, this is similar to the usageCount (renamed to "connections" in my recent patchset which isn't yet reviewed/pushed) - it's incremented by one for every guest interface using a particular forwardIf, but that information isn't saved to the file in /var (partly because doing so could lead to an erroneous count if a qemu process was terminated while libvirtd was in the middle of restarting). Instead, when libvirtd is restarted, the network driver reloads all the networks with the usageCounts all set to 0. Then, as the qemu driver reconnects to all of the running domains, it calls into networkNotifyActualDevice() for each guest interface connected to a network. networkNotifyActualDevice() does some things similar to networkAllocateActualDevice(), except that instead of searching for a device to use, qemu tells the network driver which device it's already using. If that device isn't available, then the network driver throws up its hands in error (because that shouldn't ever happen), but otherwise just increments the usageCount and returns success. This way, by the time qemu is finished reconnecting all its domains, the usageCounts are all proper. (Note that libvirtd will not allow anyone to start a new domain, or attach a new interface until after all of the domains have been reconnected, so there is no chance of some new domain/interface taking over a physical interface previously allocated to some other domain.) You need to repopulate the forwardifs from forwardPfs in networkNotifyActualDevice just as you do in networkAllocateActualDevice. That's something we should have caught in the review of commit 42c81d18. (An alternate fix would be to do that populating of the forwardIfs from forwardPfs when the network is (re)started, rather than waiting until the first time an allocation is attempted.) As I alluded to above, in the future it will be possible to make some changes to the network definition and have them take effect immediately (without restarting the network). When this is done, the "def + /var" and "newDef + /etc" sets of data will behave more like they do for domains. But even then, I think it's proper to not save the autogenerated forwardIfs to the XML file, and to regenerate them on the fly when libvirtd restarts.