[libvirt] virsh/virt-install for dummies

[Jun Koi]

Hi,

I am frustrated searching for a quick-start documentation for virsh,
just to no avail. Any help is greatly appreciated!

Here is what I did:
- Compile and install libvirt, virt-manager, virt-install and
virt-viewer from source code. This is done (on Ubuntu 8.04).
- Now I want to do install a new VM with QEMU or KVM. I got the below
error with virt-install:


# virt-install -c qemu:///system --name jeos2 --ram 500 --file
img.jeos2  --cdrom jeos-8.04.1-jeos-i386.iso
Fri, 15 Aug 2008 19:19:10 ERROR    virConnectOpen() failed
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/virt-install", line 496, in <module>
    main()
  File "/usr/bin/virt-install", line 345, in main
    conn = cli.getConnection(options.connect)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/virtinst/cli.py", line 92, in
getConnection
    return libvirt.open(connect)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/libvirt.py", line 139, in open
    if ret is None:raise libvirtError('virConnectOpen() failed')
libvirtError: virConnectOpen() failed



How to fix this? Perhaps I need to run libvirtd before using virsh???

What frustrates me is that there seems no documentation about this
process at libvirt.org at all (?).

Final question: I have an old QEMU image. How to "import" it to virsh
script? Is there any easy way to do that?

Thanks,
Jun