Libvirt provides a portable, long term stable C API for managing the virtualization technologies provided by many operating systems. It includes support for QEMU, KVM, Xen, LXC, bhyve, Virtuozzo, VMware vCenter and ESX, VMware Desktop, Hyper-V, VirtualBox and the POWER Hypervisor.
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Laine Stump 0756415f14 systemd: start libvirtd after firewalld/iptables services
When a system has enabled the iptables/ip6tables services rather than
firewalld, there is no explicit ordering of the start of those
services vs. libvirtd. This creates a problem when libvirtd.service is
started before ip[6]tables, as the latter, when it finally is started,
will remove all of the iptables rules that had previously been added
by libvirt, including the custom chains where libvirt's rules are
kept. This results in an error message similar to the following when a
user subsequently tries to start a new libvirt network:

 "Error while activating network: Call to virNetworkCreate failed:
 internal error: Failed to apply firewall rules
 /usr/sbin/ip6tables -w --table filter --insert LIBVIRT_FWO \
   --in-interface virbr2 --jump REJECT:
 ip6tables: No chain/target/match by that name."

(Prior to logging this error, it also would have caused failure to
forward (or block) traffic in some cases, e.g. for guests on a NATed
network, since libvirt's rules to forward/block had all been deleted
and libvirt didn't know about it, so it couldn't fix the problem)

When this happens, the problem can be remedied by simply restarting
libvirtd.service (which has the side-effect of reloading all
libvirt-generated firewall rules)

Instead, we can just explicitly stating in the libvirtd.service file
that libvirtd.service should start after ip6tables.service and
ip6tables.service, eliminating the race condition that leads to the
error.

There is also nothing (that I can see) in the systemd .service files
to guarantee that firewalld.service will be started (if enabled) prior
to libvirtd.service. The same error scenario given above would occur
if libvirtd.service started before firewalld.service.  Even before
that, though libvirtd would have detected that firewalld.service was
disabled, and then turn off all firewalld support. So, for example,
firewalld's libvirt zone wouldn't be used, and most likely traffic
from guests would therefore be blocked (all with no external
indication of the source of the problem other than a debug-level log
when libvirtd was started saying that firewalld wasn't in use); also
libvirtd wouldn't notice when firewalld reloaded its rules (which also
simultaneously deletes all of libvirt's rules).

I'm not aware of any reports that have been traced back to
libvirtd.service starting before firewalld.service, but have seen that
error reported multiple times, and also don't see an existing
dependency that would guarantee firewalld.service starts before
libvirtd.service, so it's possible it's been happening and we just
haven't gotten to the bottom of it.

This patch adds an After= line to the libvirtd.service file for each
of iptables.service, ip6tables.service, and firewalld.servicee, which
should guarantee that libvirtd.service isn't started until systemd has
started whichever of the others is enabled.

This race was diagnosed, and patch proposed, by Jason Montleon in
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1723698 . At the time (April 2019) danpb
agreed with him that this change to libvirtd.service was a reasonable
thing to do, but I guess everyone thought someone else was going to
post a patch, so in the end nobody did.

Signed-off-by: Laine Stump <laine@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Michal Privoznik <mprivozn@redhat.com>
2020-05-05 20:16:02 -04:00
.ctags.d maint: Add support for .ctags.d 2019-05-31 17:54:28 +02:00
.github github: skip lockdown of old issues/prs 2020-04-07 17:50:54 +01:00
build-aux qemumonitortestutils: Make test monitor failures more prominent 2020-04-27 08:13:48 +02:00
ci ci: Drop handling of $PKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR 2020-03-04 11:24:10 +01:00
docs docs: note that <dnsmasq:option> was added in libvirt 5.6.0 2020-05-05 20:15:56 -04:00
examples qemu: support Panic Crashloaded event handling 2020-02-07 14:05:25 +00:00
include/libvirt API: Add VIR_DOMAIN_JOB_ERRMSG domain job statistics field 2020-04-24 08:56:57 +02:00
m4 qemu-conf: add configurable dbus-daemon location 2020-03-24 15:57:33 +01:00
po vbox: remove unused support for Windows MSCOM 2020-04-20 11:34:59 +01:00
scripts gitlab: convert to shared container for DCO check 2020-05-04 15:43:55 +01:00
src systemd: start libvirtd after firewalld/iptables services 2020-05-05 20:16:02 -04:00
tests Drop needless variable 2020-05-05 11:19:34 +02:00
tools virt-host-validate-bhyve.c: Reintroduce @ret to virHostValidateBhyve() 2020-05-05 14:45:58 +02:00
.color_coded.in gnulib: delete all gnulib integration 2020-02-07 15:03:54 +00:00
.ctags ctags: Generate tags for headers, i.e. function prototypes 2018-09-18 14:21:33 +02:00
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.gitlab-ci.yml gitlab: update list of distros to use latest versions 2020-05-04 17:20:08 +01:00
.gitmodules gnulib: delete all gnulib integration 2020-02-07 15:03:54 +00:00
.gitpublish gitpublish: add a subject prefix 2020-01-16 13:04:11 +00:00
.mailmap mailmap: Remove some duplicates 2019-06-07 13:18:08 +02:00
.travis.yml travis: explicitly include gnutls to ensure it is updated 2020-04-24 15:00:58 +01:00
.ycm_extra_conf.py.in gnulib: delete all gnulib integration 2020-02-07 15:03:54 +00:00
ABOUT-NLS Convert all remaining Markdown files to reStructuredText 2020-04-14 16:29:04 +02:00
AUTHORS.in AUTHORS: Add Fabiano Fidêncio 2019-12-19 16:42:06 +01:00
autogen.sh build: stop running aclocal manually 2020-02-25 09:22:56 +00:00
ChangeLog maint: Stop generating ChangeLog from git 2019-04-03 09:45:25 +02:00
config-post.h gnulib: delete all gnulib integration 2020-02-07 15:03:54 +00:00
configure.ac maint: Post-release version bump to 6.4.0 2020-05-05 10:52:22 +02:00
CONTRIBUTING.rst CONTRIBUTING: Include note about build system tools 2020-05-04 19:03:51 +02:00
COPYING maint: follow recommended practice for using LGPL 2013-05-20 14:15:21 -06:00
COPYING.LESSER maint: Remove control characters from LGPL license file 2015-09-25 09:16:24 +02:00
gitdm.config gitdm: add 'ibm' file 2019-10-18 17:32:52 +02:00
GNUmakefile build: merge all syntax-check logic into one file 2019-10-09 13:36:54 +01:00
libvirt-admin.pc.in Add libvirt-admin library 2015-06-16 13:46:20 +02:00
libvirt-lxc.pc.in Add pkg-config files for libvirt-qemu & libvirt-lxc 2014-06-23 16:17:27 +01:00
libvirt-qemu.pc.in Add pkg-config files for libvirt-qemu & libvirt-lxc 2014-06-23 16:17:27 +01:00
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mingw-libvirt.spec.in Remove phyp driver 2019-12-20 12:25:42 -05:00
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run.in run.in: Include tools directory on $PATH. 2020-01-21 13:04:57 +01:00

.. image:: https://gitlab.com/libvirt/libvirt/badges/master/pipeline.svg
     :target: https://gitlab.com/libvirt/libvirt/pipelines
     :alt: GitLab CI Build Status
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     :target: https://travis-ci.org/libvirt/libvirt
     :alt: Travis CI Build Status
.. image:: https://bestpractices.coreinfrastructure.org/projects/355/badge
     :target: https://bestpractices.coreinfrastructure.org/projects/355
     :alt: CII Best Practices

==============================
Libvirt API for virtualization
==============================

Libvirt provides a portable, long term stable C API for managing the
virtualization technologies provided by many operating systems. It
includes support for QEMU, KVM, Xen, LXC, bhyve, Virtuozzo, VMware
vCenter and ESX, VMware Desktop, Hyper-V, VirtualBox and the POWER
Hypervisor.

For some of these hypervisors, it provides a stateful management
daemon which runs on the virtualization host allowing access to the
API both by non-privileged local users and remote users.

Layered packages provide bindings of the libvirt C API into other
languages including Python, Perl, PHP, Go, Java, OCaml, as well as
mappings into object systems such as GObject, CIM and SNMP.

Further information about the libvirt project can be found on the
website:

https://libvirt.org


License
=======

The libvirt C API is distributed under the terms of GNU Lesser General
Public License, version 2.1 (or later). Some parts of the code that are
not part of the C library may have the more restrictive GNU General
Public License, version 2.0 (or later). See the files ``COPYING.LESSER``
and ``COPYING`` for full license terms & conditions.


Installation
============

Libvirt uses the GNU Autotools build system, so in general can be built
and installed with the usual commands, however, we mandate to have the
build directory different than the source directory. For example, to build
in a manner that is suitable for installing as root, use:

::

  $ mkdir build && cd build
  $ ../configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var
  $ make
  $ sudo make install

While to build & install as an unprivileged user

::

  $ mkdir build && cd build
  $ ../configure --prefix=$HOME/usr
  $ make
  $ make install

The libvirt code relies on a large number of 3rd party libraries. These will
be detected during execution of the ``configure`` script and a summary printed
which lists any missing (optional) dependencies.


Contributing
============

The libvirt project welcomes contributions in many ways. For most components
the best way to contribute is to send patches to the primary development
mailing list. Further guidance on this can be found on the website:

https://libvirt.org/contribute.html


Contact
=======

The libvirt project has two primary mailing lists:

* libvirt-users@redhat.com (**for user discussions**)
* libvir-list@redhat.com (**for development only**)

Further details on contacting the project are available on the website:

https://libvirt.org/contact.html