- Users - libvirt List Archives

Migrating VM to new supervisor - general question
by fc26wuqa＠studserv.uni-leipzig.de 20 Apr '26

20 Apr '26

Hello, I planned to move my VMs to a new (VM) supervisor, because I want to use another operation system for it. I am doubting myself, if this is such a good idea. When all my VMs are on different disks, can I just install a different OS on the root partition and just import the qcow2 files afterwards. Or am I risking losing my VMs/disks? I am a little bit afraid of messing it up... Thank you.

2 3

Windows 11 sound driver problem
by Owen Le Blanc 20 Apr '26

20 Apr '26

I have a Windows 11 system running under libvirt/qemu. A recent Microsoft software update overwrote the audio driver. Device manager would not let me install the one from the virtio ISO because it had determined that the "best driver was already installed". But sound wasn't working. I solved this by going into device manager and deleting the windows driver, then adding the viogpudo driver from the ISO manually. After rebooting the virtual machine, audio was working again. Yours, -- Owen Dr O V Le Blanc

1 0

attaching a specific usb device to vm
by daggs 20 Apr '26

20 Apr '26

Greetings, I have two identical hdd to usb enclosures connected to a server which run two vms, lets call the foo and goo. I'm looking for the ability to connect a specific hdd to a specific vm, naturally using vendor and device is not possible and using bus+port will provide what I need however it does not persists incase of port change. I saw that using the hooks, libvirt provides the xml to the hook and read it from the output of the hook. I tried adding detection and adding accurate hostdev xml tag to the vm xml and I see it from the output of the hook execution in the prepare stage however, the system boots but the hdd is not visible in guest. the docs reference this feature only for migrate and restore ops, does this means I cannot use it in the prepare stage? if so, is there another way to do what I want? Thanks, Dagg

3 4

LXC: net.unix.max_dgram_qlen
by Alexander Filatov 13 Apr '26

13 Apr '26

I want to set the sysctl net.unix.max_dgram_qlen parameter in LXC because the default value (10) is too small for me. Is it possible in some way without changing the source code of Linux kernel? I'm looking for the setting in XML configuration for an LXC domain and I can't find one. Setting it inside an LXC container (sysctl -w) is prohibited.

1 0

Questions about migrating VMs (with virt-manager)
by fc26wuqa＠studserv.uni-leipzig.de 09 Apr '26

09 Apr '26

Hello, I want to migrate multiple VMs to a new host. In the process, several questions came up, where I could not find an answer. I am using virt-manager version 1:5.0.0-5+deb13u1. I reordered and renamed my storage pools: When migrating a VM, how can I move the VM to a specific storage pool? Will the VM be moved to a storage pool with the same name by default? When migration finishes, the VM on the source host will still be accessible but will shut down. Is that true? Can I prevent the VM from shutting down during the migration? Thank you.

3 5

FYI: possible mailman service disruption 2026/04/08
by Daniel P. Berrangé 08 Apr '26

08 Apr '26

The hosting of the libvirt mailman instance will be moving to a new location tomorrow on 2026/04/08, at around 0900-1000 UTC. While we don't expect any significant loss of service, there could be minor short term, temporary disruption for sending emails while DNS records update. With regards, Daniel -- |: https://berrange.com ~~ https://hachyderm.io/@berrange :| |: https://libvirt.org ~~ https://entangle-photo.org :| |: https://pixelfed.art/berrange ~~ https://fstop138.berrange.com :|

1 1

enable nested virtualization inside VM
by fc26wuqa＠studserv.uni-leipzig.de 31 Mar '26

31 Mar '26

Hello, I want to set up a NAT network inside a VM (so far as I understand, the name for that is nested virtualization). Unfortunately I only have Shell Access to the VM, and am not hosting it. I installed debian. The output of `uname -a`: Linux kvm1 6.12.74+deb13+1-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.12.74-2 (2026-03-08) x86_64 GNU/Linux When I run `kvm-ok` it says "INFO: Your CPU does not support KVM extensions KVM acceleration can NOT be used". When I try to load `kvm_intel` into the kernel (even with nested=1 option), it says "modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'kvm_intel': Operation not supported". I can't start a network, there is no `/dev/kvm` device. I installed libvirt with `apt install --no-install-recommends qemu-system libvirt-clients libvirt-daemon-system`. Is there a way to enable libvirt support? For me, or the admins that host the VMs? Thank you.

2 4

double startup of sessioned vm causes user systemd service to fail
by daggs 11 Mar '26

11 Mar '26

Greetings, I'm running 3 vms in session mode on arch linux, I need each vm to startup on boot. libvirt version is 12.1.0. from what I understand, libvirt-guests lacks session support so I went to look and found that I can use per user systemd service, using this doc: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd/User I defined each user to linger, created a service file and enabled it for each user. I've rebooted the machine and found out that not all the vms started, some of them have failed, each boot the outcome differs but usually there is atleast one vm which doesn't startup. I've check the status of the service and found that in the cases where the boot failed, the error was that the vm is already active, however virsh list shows ihe vm is off. none of the vms is marked as autostart. how can I find out who is the other source that starts up the vms? I assume it is something internal of libvirt. ideally, if possible, i'd like to use something from within libvirt or at least stop whatever autoboots the vms. Thanks, Dagg

1 0

Writeback vs default cache modes
by João Jandre 04 Mar '26

04 Mar '26

Hi, all I've been reading the QEMU documentation, the Libvirt documentation, as well as doing some testing and code investigation regarding disk cache modes. In the Libvirt documentation, it is stated that the disk driver cache modes accepted are "default", "none", "writethrough", "writeback", "directsync" and "unsafe". Analyzing the code, we can see that this is somewhat reflected on the cache modes that QEMU documents on the -drive option (https://qemu-project.gitlab.io/qemu/system/invocation.html) https://github.com/libvirt/libvirt/blob/04c1f458313e9001f5a804a898408e1f498… However, the default option (when we do not define the "cache" option) is different from other options and does not seem to map to any option on the Qemu side. I see that, from testing and analyzing the code, if the default (not defining the "cache" options) is used, cache.direct and cache.no-flush are not informed; also, the write-cache option is not informed. Just for comparison, here is a disk defined with cache=writeback: XML: |<disk type='file' device='disk'> <driver name='qemu' type='qcow2' cache='writeback'/> <source file='/mnt/a66f48f5-13c6-3676-b320-a15d32bbf32f/c0e925a9-6697-4ee9-8abf-d36c7a95cea4' index='2'/> <backingStore type='file' index='3'> <format type='qcow2'/> <source file='/mnt/a66f48f5-13c6-3676-b320-a15d32bbf32f/0db52809-9f33-43ac-8151-5452e9dee330'/> <backingStore/> </backingStore> <target dev='vda' bus='virtio'/> <serial>c0e925a966974ee98abf</serial> <alias name='virtio-disk0'/> <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x05' function='0x0'/> </disk> | Generated QEMU command: |-blockdev {"driver":"file","filename":"/mnt/a66f48f5-13c6-3676-b320-a15d32bbf32f/c0e925a9-6697-4ee9-8abf-d36c7a95cea4","node-name":"libvirt-2-storage","cache":{"direct":false,"no-flush":false},"auto-read-only":true,"discard":"unmap"} -blockdev {"node-name":"libvirt-2-format","read-only":false,"cache":{"direct":false,"no-flush":false},"driver":"qcow2","file":"libvirt-2-storage","backing":"libvirt-3-format"} -device virtio-blk-pci,bus=pci.0,addr=0x5,drive=libvirt-2-format,id=virtio-disk0,bootindex=2,write-cache=on,serial=c0e925a966974ee98abf | And here is a disk that does not have the cache option: XML: |<disk type='file' device='disk'> <driver name='qemu' type='qcow2'/> <source file='/mnt/b59eff0f-5b97-37ed-a513-9e1983d1d19b/b430296b-0924-412e-a7b1-ddc3d4c90f83' index='2'/> <backingStore/> <target dev='vdc' bus='virtio'/> <serial>b430296b0924412ea7b1</serial> <alias name='virtio-disk2'/> <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x08' function='0x0'/> </disk> | Generated QEMU command: |blockdev {"driver":"file","filename":"/mnt/b59eff0f-5b97-37ed-a513-9e1983d1d19b/b430296b-0924-412e-a7b1-ddc3d4c90f83","node-name":"libvirt-2-storage","auto-read-only":true,"discard":"unmap"} -blockdev {"node-name":"libvirt-2-format","read-only":false,"driver":"qcow2","file":"libvirt-2-storage","backing":null} -device virtio-blk-pci,bus=pci.0,addr=0x8,drive=libvirt-2-format,id=virtio-disk2,serial=b430296b0924412ea7b1 | The QEMU documentation states in the -drive option that the default cache mode is |Writeback| (see https://qemu-project.gitlab.io/qemu/system/invocation.html) so I expected that setting |Writeback| or |Default| as the cache mode on Libvirt would also be the same. I ran some performance tests using both options to try and verify if they were the same, but they are clearly different. For each of the configuration profiles below, I created a VM and ran some fio tests: Combination Disk cache mode Disk Controller IO thread IO policy hds0i default virtio-scsi 0 iouring hds0t default virtio-scsi 0 threads hds1i default virtio-scsi 1 iouring hds1t default virtio-scsi 1 threads hdv0i default virtio 0 iouring hdv0t default virtio 0 threads hdv1i default virtio 1 iouring hdv1t default virtio 1 threads wbs0i writeback virtio-scsi 0 iouring wbs0t writeback virtio-scsi 0 threads wbs1i writeback virtio-scsi 1 iouring wbs1t writeback virtio-scsi 1 threads wbv0i writeback virtio 0 iouring wbv0t writeback virtio 0 threads wbv1i writeback virtio 1 iouring wbv1t writeback virtio 1 threads The fio test results are in a html attached to the email. I would like to understand what the practical difference is between not informing the cache and any other option. I can see that the disk is defined in different way, but just by analyzing the code I was not able to understand what that leads to; also, looking at the performance tests, we clearly see a difference in the results. Would anyone be able to explain what is the expected behavior when the disk is defined in such a way? By the way, I'm using Libvirt 8.0.0 and Qemu 6.2.0. Best regards, João Jandre

3 2

How to properly modify xml in snapshot memory / managed save file
by wrangle 17 Feb '26

17 Feb '26

I am trying to move virtual machines to a new location on the same host. I want to preserve not only snapshots, but domain manage saved state as well as snapshot saved state. The xml is embedded in the snapshot and domain saved state and paths base image files are hard coded. I tried to sed replace the paths and necessary info, but it seems like libvirt expects the xml to be a certain length so it fails parsing. Parsing fails at different points of the embedded xml when I change the length of the path in the embedded xml. How can I properly edit the snapshot and domain managed saved state xml?

2 2