The admin connection defaults to the system-wide 'libvirtd' daemon to manage (libvirtd:///system). As we've now switched to modular daemons this will not work for most users out of the box: $ virt-admin version error: Failed to connect to the admin server error: no valid connection error: Failed to connect socket to '/run/user/1000/libvirt/libvirt-admin-sock': No such file or directory As we don't want to assume which daemon the user wants to manage in the modular topology there's no reasonable default to pick. Give a hint to the users to use the '-c' if the connection to the default URI fails: $ virt-admin version NOTE: Connecting to default daemon. Specify daemon using '-c' (e.g. virtqemud:///system) error: Failed to connect to the admin server error: no valid connection error: Failed to connect socket to '/run/user/1000/libvirt/libvirt-admin-sock': No such file or directory Signed-off-by: Peter Krempa <pkrempa(a)redhat.com&gt; --- tools/virt-admin.c | 3 +++ 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+) diff --git a/tools/virt-admin.c b/tools/virt-admin.c index fa9304c772..aaf6edb9a9 100644 --- a/tools/virt-admin.c +++ b/tools/virt-admin.c @@ -102,6 +102,9 @@ vshAdmConnect(vshControl *ctl, unsigned int flags) priv->conn = virAdmConnectOpen(ctl->connname, flags); if (!priv->conn) { + if (!ctl->connname) + vshPrintExtra(ctl, "%s", _("NOTE: Connecting to default daemon. Specify daemon using '-c' (e.g. virtqemud:///system)\n")); + if (priv->wantReconnect) vshError(ctl, "%s", _("Failed to reconnect to the admin server")); else