[libvirt] unable to connect to a ESX via ssh

[Matthias Bolte]

2010/3/8 Dimitris Kalogeras <D.Kalogeras at noc.ntua.gr>:
> Hi *,
>
> Apologies for cross posting.
> I have installed the the libvirt and virt-toolss in an ubuntu karmic
> 9.10. I am trying to access-manage an ESX 3.5i via ssh protocol.
> Although I have configured and verified that ssh access operates
> correctly  with  keys, when I try to access the ESX via virt-manager,
> it  doesn't  work.
>
> Cheers,
> Dimitris
>

You're the second one that asks this question in the last few days.
Maybe I should take this as an indication that I need to improve the
ESX driver documentation.

The remote mechanisms of libvirt aren't used for the ESX driver. So
don't use esx+ssh://example.com, just use esx://example.com. The ESX
driver communicates the the ESX server using HTTPS.

You'll probably see an error message about failed certificate
verification. That one comes from the fact the normally your client PC
won't have the certificates that VMware uses to sign the SSL
certificates for HTTPS.

You can disable certificate verification by adding no_verify=1 to the
connection URI: esx://example.com/?no_verify=1

Also make sure that your libvirt version has ESX support compiled in.
Debian for example ships libvirt packages without ESX support.

Also see http://libvirt.org/drvesx.html if you haven't yet.

Matthias