Insufficient Permission to Start a VM

Symptom

The VM fails to be started, and the following information is displayed:

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error: Failed to start domain VM1
error: internal error: qemu unexpectedly closed the monitor: 2020-08-31T04:11:16.783295Z qemu-kvm: -chardev socket,id=charnetO,path=/var/run/openvswitch/tap1,server: Failed to bind socket to /var/run/openvswitch/tap1: Permission denied 

Key Process and Cause Analysis

• The SELinux system prevents the VM from creating the /var/run/openvswitch/tap1 file.
• The QEMU process permission is insufficient.

Conclusion and Solution

1. In the QEMU configuration file /etc/libvirt/qemu.conf, ensure that the QEMU process user has adequate permissions on the /var/run/openvswitch directory. The following shows the line numbers of the default configuration file:

   

   Restart libvirtd after the modification.

   systemctl restart libvirtd

2. Ensure that SELinux does not block processes.
   1. Disable SELinux.

      setenforce 0

   2. Start the VM.

      virsh start VM1

      The VM is started successfully, and the fault is rectified.