I am trying to work my way up the learning curve through a forest of conflicting and mostly non-working examples and help pages spread about the internet. I have had no trouble getting a basic vm to build and to then start it up. But I have utterly failed to gain access to the machine. The only host I have available that can run it is a remote server. I have not got the networking side working yet, but I can live with that for the moment because I have thus far not been able to get access to a simple console on the vm. Here is the machine: <domain type='kvm' id='2'> <name>ubuntu</name> <uuid>8904d893-87dc-dc1f-0219-486745a370f6</uuid> <memory>262144</memory> <currentMemory>262144</currentMemory> <vcpu>1</vcpu> <os> <type arch='x86_64' machine='pc-0.12'>hvm</type> <boot dev='hd'/> </os> <features> <acpi/> </features> <clock offset='utc'/> <on_poweroff>destroy</on_poweroff> <on_reboot>restart</on_reboot> <on_crash>destroy</on_crash> <devices> <emulator>/usr/bin/kvm</emulator> <disk type='file' device='disk'> <source file='/home/myhome/ubuntu-kvm/tmpl3Xutj.qcow2'/> <target dev='hda' bus='ide'/> </disk> <interface type='network'> <mac address='52:54:00:be:d5:c2'/> <source network='default'/> <target dev='vnet0'/> <model type='virtio'/> </interface> <input type='mouse' bus='ps2'/> <graphics type='vnc' port='5900' autoport='yes' listen='127.0.0.1'/> <video> <model type='cirrus' vram='9216' heads='1'/> </video> <serial type='pty'> <source path='/dev/pts/2'/> <target port='0'/> </serial> <console type='pty' tty='/dev/pts/2'> <source path='/dev/pts/2'/> <target port='0'/> </console> </devices> <seclabel type='dynamic' model='apparmor'> <label>libvirt-8904d893-87dc-dc1f-0219-486745a370f6</label> <imagelabel>libvirt-8904d893-87dc-dc1f-0219-486745a370f6</imagelabel> </seclabel> </domain> I dumped the original and added the pty stuff from an example, but when I create it and connect to the console: # virsh -c qemu:///system create ubuntu2.xml --console Domain ubuntu created from ubuntu2.xml Connected to domain ubuntu Escape character is ^] nothing appears and nothing I type echoes. At least I can escape though... I seem to have no trouble creating them, but it sure would be nice to be able to access them. Oh, and btw. Every time I create a VM with the ubuntu ubuntu-vm-builder kvm hardy --mem 256 --iso /path/to/ubuntu-8.10-server-i386.iso ubuntu-vm-builder kvm lucid --mem 256 --iso ubuntu-10.04-server-amd64.iso It leaves a loopback disk behind that never goes away. I've had to reboot the server once already and upped loop_max to 32 so I would be able to work longer before doing so again.