20.4. Connecting to the Hypervisor with virsh Connect

The virsh connect [hostname-or-URI] [--readonly] command begins a local hypervisor session using virsh. After the first time you run this command it will run automatically each time the virsh shell runs. The hypervisor connection URI specifies how to connect to the hypervisor. The most commonly used URIs are:

The command can be run as follows, with the target guest being specified either either by its machine name (hostname) or the URL of the hypervisor (the output of the virsh uri command), as shown:

virsh uri
qemu:///session

$ virsh uri
qemu:///session

For example, to establish a session to connect to your set of guest virtual machines, with you as the local user:

virsh connect qemu:///session

$ virsh connect qemu:///session

To initiate a read-only connection, append the above command with --readonly. For more information on URIs, see Remote URIs. If you are unsure of the URI, the virsh uri command will display it: