[libvirt-users] How to disable dnsmasq from starting automatically with libvirtd

[Laine Stump]

On 09/13/2012 04:14 AM, Osier Yang wrote:
>
> If you want to use the default NAT network, but to use your own
> DHCP server instead of dnsmasq, patches/RFC/ideas are welcomed
> (libvir-list at redhat.com).
> If you want to use network in mode other than NAT. You won't have
> to suffer from the dnsmasq. For the network XML format:

That's not exactly correct. Any network defined with <forward
mode='nat'>, <forward mode='route'>, or no forward element at all, will
result in libvirtd creating a new bridge device for that network. If the
network also has an IP address defined, then a dnsmasq instance will be
started, listening *only* on that IP address (i.e. only on the bridge)
for DNS requests. If the <ip> element also has a <dhcp> section, then
the dnsmasq instance will also listen on the dhcp port *only* on the bridge.

For <forward mode='bridge'> and <forward mode='hostdev'>, no bridge
device is created by libvirt, no IP address is configured on the host,
and no dnsmasq is started.