virsh version does basically this hvType = virConnectGetType(...) virGetVersion(..., hvType, ...) [...] Assuming a remote connection virConnectGetType calls the remote driver that returns the type of the underlying driver on the server side, for example QEMU. Then virGetVersion compares hvType to a set of strings that depend on configure options and returns LIBVIR_VERSION_NUMBER in most cases. Now this fails in case libvirt on the client side is just compiled with the remote driver enabled and the server side has the actual driver such as the QEMU driver. It just happens to work when the actual driver is compiled in on client and server side. But that's not the case here. freebsd# ./tools/virsh -c qemu+tcp://192.168.178.22/system version Compiled against library: libvir 0.9.2 error: failed to get the library version error: this function is not supported by the connection driver: virGetVersion This is not FreeBSD specific, happens on Windows as well due to the similar drivers configuration. The problem is that virConnectGetType returns QEMU, but virGetVersion on the client side only accepts Remote as hvType due to all other drivers being disabled on the client side. I'm not sure how to fix this properly, does anyone have some idea?