7.3. Connecting to a virtual machine by using SSH

Prerequisites

• You have network connection and root access privileges to the target VM.
• If the target VM is located on a remote host, you also have connection and root access privileges to that host.

• Your VM network assigns IP addresses by dnsmasq generated by libvirt. This is the case for example in libvirt NAT networks.

  Notably, if your VM is using one of the following network configurations, you cannot connect to the VM by using SSH:

  • hostdev interfaces
  • Direct interfaces
  • Bridge interaces

• The libvirt-nss component is installed and enabled on the VM’s host. If it is not, do the following:

  1. Install the libvirt-nss package:

     # dnf install libvirt-nss

  2. Edit the /etc/nsswitch.conf file and add libvirt_guest to the hosts line:

     ...
     passwd:      compat
     shadow:      compat
     group:       compat
     hosts:       files libvirt_guest dns
     ...

Troubleshooting

• If you do not know the VM’s name, you can list all VMs available on the host by using the virsh list --all command:

  # virsh list --all
  Id    Name                           State
  ----------------------------------------------------
  2     testguest1                    running
  -     testguest2                    shut off