On 10/11/2011 02:04 AM, Nicolas Sebrecht wrote:
Yes, you goofed by directly editing /etc/libvirt. By doing that, you are going behind libvirt's back - if your edits happen to work, then a libvirtd restart will use them, but if you introduce a typo or other problem, then it is your fault that libvirt can't get things to work. If you had instead gone through the libvirt API (such as by using 'virsh edit bwimail02'), then libvirt would do some sanity checking up front and refuse to install your changes unless they were safe.
Which is comunterintuitive, IMHO. Admins are used to edit configuration files in /etc because most software are designed this way.
Files not designed to be edited may stand in /var. At least, current files in /etc could have a header with comments from preventing manual edition and tips on how to deal to change configuration. ,-p
Which is exactly why newer libvirt sticks this header on such files (here, from /etc/libvirt/qemu/domainname.xml): <!-- WARNING: THIS IS AN AUTO-GENERATED FILE. CHANGES TO IT ARE LIKELY TO BE OVERWRITTEN AND LOST. Changes to this xml configuration should be made using: virsh edit domainname or other application using the libvirt API. --> -- Eric Blake eblake@redhat.com +1-801-349-2682 Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org