On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 2:28 AM, Andras Horvath <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Hi, > > I'm using KVM like the following without having to use root access: > > su - > yum install libvirt virt-manager qemu-kvm > chkconfig libvirtd on > # create new group for libvirt > groupadd libvirt > # add my user to this group > usermod -G myuser libvirt > # enable groups for libvirt instead of the default root > # http://libvirt.org/auth.html#ACL_server_unix_perms > nano /etc/libvirt/libvirtd.conf > unix_sock_group = "libvirt" > auth_unix_rw = "none" > service libvirtd start > exit Thanks for the pointer. It's potentially useful, and considerably simpler than some of the alternate solutions, and solves a separate remote access problem. I also note that those are simply uncommenting the existing lines in libvirtd.conf. And it provides better support for remote access to libvirtd for authorized users than requiring local sudo. > # log out and back on > virt-manager I''ll try this on a new KVM server I'm building before I try it in production. Thanks for the pointer. Unfortunately, it's a fail as far as browsing mountable backup disk images for use by KVM in virt-manager. If the NFS system is properly secured to allow only root user access to the top of the NFS file system, complexities begin to occur if you're accessing it as, say, the "libvirtd" group members. And since the gid of libvirtd may differ among different systems, well, you can get in security management trouble real fast unless you're quite careful or pulling stunts like using NFSv4 with ACL's, which I really don't recommend for the faint of heart. That kind of thing is why I specifically asked if anyone had virt-manager working with sudo.