libvirt users - Dec 2018 - Re: "virsh list --all" is intermittently causing a shutdown client to boot?

Autostart is set to "enable" for this domain, but I wouldn't
expect autostart to be invoked when a simple "read-only" command is
run.  I'd expect the "list --all" command to only display details
about the domain...not change the status of the domain by booting it.  Maybe
I'm misunderstanding things...



    On Thursday, December 13, 2018, 11:20:30 AM EST, Michal Privoznik
<mprivozn@redhat.com> wrote:
 
 On 12/11/18 3:39 PM, Peter Kukla wrote:
> Hello,
> <snip/>
Could it be that the domain is set as "autostart"? The session daemon
is
slightly different to system daemon. The former come and go if there is
no activity for (by default) 30 seconds. And if the domain would be
marked as 'autostart' (meaning start the domain automatically when the
daemon is being started) the I could imagine this happening.

`virsh dominfo $domain' should tell you that.

Michal

On 12/14/18 4:31 PM, Peter Kukla wrote:
>  Autostart is set to "enable" for this domain, but I wouldn't
expect autostart to be invoked when a simple "read-only" command is
run.  I'd expect the "list --all" command to only display details
about the domain...not change the status of the domain by booting it.  Maybe
I'm misunderstanding things...
Bingo!

I mean, this is still a bug, but not that trivial to fix. As I explained
earlier, in session mode the daemon is shut off after some time of
inactivity. Then, when there is some new activity the daemon is started
up again, but it has no idea about the previous state of things, i.e.
you shut down a domain and want it keep shut down. All it knows is that
there is a domain with autostart set that is not running. So it starts
the domain again.

The only solution I see is to disable autostart for session URI.
As a workaround you can start session daemon yourself (just run libvirtd
as regular user of yours). This way the daemon is not autostarted
automatically and therefore without --timeout.

Michal

That makes sense.  Now that I understand what's going on, I can work around
it.
Thanks for the explanation.
-peter

    On Friday, December 14, 2018, 3:28:32 PM EST, Michal Prívozník
<mprivozn@redhat.com> wrote:
 
 On 12/14/18 4:31 PM, Peter Kukla wrote:
>  Autostart is set to "enable" for this domain, but I wouldn't
expect autostart to be invoked when a simple "read-only" command is
run.  I'd expect the "list --all" command to only display details
about the domain...not change the status of the domain by booting it.  Maybe
I'm misunderstanding things...
Bingo!

I mean, this is still a bug, but not that trivial to fix. As I explained
earlier, in session mode the daemon is shut off after some time of
inactivity. Then, when there is some new activity the daemon is started
up again, but it has no idea about the previous state of things, i.e.
you shut down a domain and want it keep shut down. All it knows is that
there is a domain with autostart set that is not running. So it starts
the domain again.

The only solution I see is to disable autostart for session URI.
As a workaround you can start session daemon yourself (just run libvirtd
as regular user of yours). This way the daemon is not autostarted
automatically and therefore without --timeout.

Michal