Anytime I have to browse the web for some sort of reference on using some particular piece of software, I try to make it a point to record it for later. Since the name of it in totality is a bit dubious to me (feel free to straighten me out), I just listed all the names I know it by.
The Problem
I set up a VM using QEMU/KVM Session as opposed to QEMU/KVM User Session and would you know it, it just wouldn’t launch. The error:
Error starting domain: Requested operation is not valid: network ‘default’ is not active
After some web searching I learned that the ‘default’ NAT network is created by the libvirtd daemon. To check that in terminal:
sudo virsh net-list --all
That gave me this output:
Name State Autostart Persistent
----------------------------------------------
default inactive no yes
Under the status section I see that it is inactive, which is clearly the reason for the failure to launch. The fix:
sudo virsh net-start default
Running the net-list command again reveiled
Name State Autostart Persistent
--------------------------------------------
default active no yes
Enable Autostart
To ensure that I don’t have problems next time and I can forget how I did any of this, here is the solution. In terminal:
sudo virsh net-autostart default
That will return:
Network default marked as autostarted
I can now verify that to be true by using the previously stated net-list command that it Autostart is enabled.
Final Thoughts
The Virtual machine launched after I started the default interface so I know that the information taken from this site works for my system. This site also lays it out much better but in an effort to remember this process. I have written down here and linked it to there for future reference. So, should my virt-manager break again, I can click to see what the more experienced folk know.
References
http://ask.xmodulo.com/network-default-is-not-active.html
Ask Xmodulo, How to fix “network ‘default’ is not active” error in libvirt