Strange behaviour using qemu+ssh on virt-manager

[Fernando Lozano]

Hi there,

I am experimenting with different security settings for libvirtd, so I 
can give sysadmins administrative access to the KVM hypervisor without 
giving them root access on the host. I had success using TLS (with 
client-certs) and SASL, but have not managed to make polkit and ssh to 
work so far.

If I change /etc/libvirt/libvirtd.conf auth_tcp or auth_unix_rw  a local 
virsh connection gets this error:

"Authorization requires authentication but no agent is available"

Thus  I'm using "sasl" for tcp and "none" for the unix socket.

When I try a "qemu+ssh" remote virsh connection evething works fine. But 
then I try the same URL using virt-manager, and then try to open a guest 
console, virt-manager prompts multiple times for a ssh login password.

Shoudn't virt-manager resue the same ssh connection for guest console 
access? And even if it needs to open a new ssh connection for the spice 
connection, this should require only one additional ssh login.

But I tried many times, carefully typing the password each time, and I'm 
sure they were not typos: virt-manager is actually asking for the ssh 
login password many times!

Maybe people who use ssh keys (passwordless) logins didn't notice, but I 
think virt-manager should't require more than one addtional ssh 
connection per guest console. Is this a bug?


[]s, Fernando Lozano