[et-mgmt-tools] Connecting to a remote libvirtd host using virt-manger

[Jon Smith]

On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 8:43 AM, Cole Robinson <crobinso at redhat.com> wrote:
> Jon Smith wrote:
>> virt-manager and libvirtd both functioning locally.  I tried to use
>> virt-manager to access the same libvirtd host remotely but I'm having
>> some trouble.
>>
>> I'm using qemu+ssh to connect to the remote host, but when I do,
>> virt-manager turns gray and becomes unresponsive, eventually the part
>> of the window showing the hosts goes blank.  If I stop libvirtd on the
>> remote host, virt-manager refreshes itself and shows the libvirtd host
>> as connected, and even lists all the domains available.  I'm also able
>> to connect using virsh and that works fine.
>>
>> I can repeat this process over and over again, even after rebooting
>> the hosts involved.  I've also run libvirtd with the --verbose flag
>> and can send the output (~80K) if that would help.
>>
>
> What distro are you using? What virt-manager version? Distro package or
> compiled from source?
>
> How are you invoking virt-manager? Can you try running 'virt-manager
> --no-fork' from the command line, trying to connect to the remote host,
> and seeing if a password prompt pops up in the terminal?
>
> Thanks,
> Cole

Server is CentOS 5.2, client is fedora 9.  Virt-manager version is
0.5.4 binary RPM from the Fedora repo. The server was Fedora 9 but I
installed CentOS 5.2 on it today and it's using the Xen kernel now and
having the same trouble.  Again, locally, virt-manager works
fantastically, but when I try to connect remotely it gives me trouble.
 I don't know how it could possibly matter, but I'm connecting back to
another location using vpnc and then opening virt-manager, so I've got
maybe 150ms latency to the libvirtd host.

I've been launching virt-manager from Applications -> System Tools ->
Virtual Machine Manager.  Also I've launched it a few times with
something similar to: $virt-manager -c xen+ssh://10.2.30.12/system.
Now I've also tried: $virt-manager --no-fork -c
xen+ssh://10.2.30.12/system (no password prompt by the way). It seems
to be logging in because, like I said, if I stop libvirtd, I get a
list of the available guests on the libvirtd server.  And actually
once I connect if I wait 15 or 20 minutes it will return a list.  It
will just freeze up intermittently and it's never responsive to input.
 If I try to click on a guest to select it, it will take 2 or 3
minutes before the selection takes effect and the item is highlighted.