The approach I have tried is to update /etc/sysconfig/libvirt-guests as follows:

# URIs to check for running guests
# example: URIS='default xen:/// vbox+tcp://host/system lxc:///'
#URIS=default

# action taken on host boot
# - start   all guests which were running on shutdown are started on boot
#           regardless on their autostart settings
# - ignore  libvirt-guests init script won't start any guest on boot, however,
#           guests marked as autostart will still be automatically started by
#           libvirtd
ON_BOOT=ignore

# Number of seconds to wait between each guest start. Set to 0 to allow
# parallel startup.
START_DELAY=180

# action taken on host shutdown
# - suspend   all running guests are suspended using virsh managedsave
# - shutdown  all running guests are asked to shutdown. Please be careful with
#             this settings since there is no way to distinguish between a
#             guest which is stuck or ignores shutdown requests and a guest
#             which just needs a long time to shutdown. When setting
#             ON_SHUTDOWN=shutdown, you must also set SHUTDOWN_TIMEOUT to a
#             value suitable for your guests.
ON_SHUTDOWN=shutdown

# If set to non-zero, shutdown will suspend guests concurrently. Number of
# guests on shutdown at any time will not exceed number set in this variable.
#PARALLEL_SHUTDOWN=0

# Number of seconds we're willing to wait for a guest to shut down. If parallel
# shutdown is enabled, this timeout applies as a timeout for shutting down all
# guests on a single URI defined in the variable URIS. If this is 0, then there
# is no time out (use with caution, as guests might not respond to a shutdown
# request). The default value is 300 seconds (5 minutes).
#SHUTDOWN_TIMEOUT=300

# If non-zero, try to bypass the file system cache when saving and
# restoring guests, even though this may give slower operation for
# some file systems.
#BYPASS_CACHE=0
I have verified the default URIs path in libvirt.conf is correct also and have tried changing the default in the above config file to qemu:///system & qemu:///

All the guests boot at the same time regardless of changes made.

I have also tried removing the contents of /etc/libvirt/qemu/autostart/ incase the symbolic links were overriding the libvirt-guests config however nothing starts then (not surprising).

 

Hi Folks,

been searching around for a while on this and see similar issues reported going back a number of years without solution.

The START_DELAY=(number) seems to be completely ignored in /etc/sysconfig/libvirt-guests which is unfortunate as it means everything starts at once without control.

This is fine on NVMe based servers however on the older spinning disks the I/O is creating significant issues.

Is anyone aware of any other methods to achieve a start up delay for guest virtual machines on boot?

Thanks.

Anthony.