Re: [libvirt-users] libvirtd vs XDG_RUNTIME_DIR

I ran into an odd problem today. I wanted to share it here in the hopes of maybe saving someone else some lost time. When you run libvirtd as an unprivileged user (e.g., if you target qemu:///session from a non-root account), then libvirt will open a unix domain socket in one of two places: - If XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is defined, then inside $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/libvirt/libvirt-sock - If XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is *not* defined, then inside $HOME/.cache/libvirt/libvirt-sock With a CentOS 7 system, at least, if you ssh directly into an account, XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is set. But! If you `su -` to the account from root, e.g: # su - stack Then XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is *not* set. The problem is a little subtle, because most operations you will perform will work just fine in both cases: you can query for defined but not active guests, storagep pools, volumes, and so forth without a problem and you'll get the same answer.