terraform-provider-libvirt Error: Error defining libvirt network: virError(Code=3, Domain=19, Message='this function is not supported by the connection driver: virNetworkDefineXML')

System Information

Linux distribution

N/A

I am running macOS Mojave 10.14.5 along with Homebrew

$ brew --version
Homebrew 2.1.11-40-gd294881
Homebrew/homebrew-core (git revision b857; last commit 2019-09-09)
Homebrew/homebrew-cask (git revision b6582c; last commit 2019-09-09)

Terraform version

$ terraform -v
Terraform v0.12.8

Provider and libvirt versions

$ terraform-provider-libvirt -version
terraform-provider-libvirt was not built correctly
Compiled against library: libvirt 5.7.0
Using library: libvirt 5.7.0
Running hypervisor: QEMU 4.1.0
Running against daemon: 5.7.0

If that gives you "was not built correctly", get the Git commit hash from your local provider repository:

I did not install from Git -- I installed with go get ...

Checklist

[ ] Is your issue/contribution related with enabling some setting/option exposed by libvirt that the plugin does not yet support, or requires changing/extending the provider terraform schema?
- [ ] Make sure you explain why this option is important to you, why it should be important to everyone. Describe your use-case with detail and provide examples where possible.
- [ ] If it is a very special case, consider using the XSLT support in the provider to tweak the definition instead of opening an issue
- [ ] Maintainers do not have expertise in every libvirt setting, so please, describe the feature and how it is used. Link to the appropriate documentation
[ ] Is it a bug or something that does not work as expected? Please make sure you fill the version information below:

Description of Issue/Question

Setup

I am following this blog post and adapting it to my enviornment (macOS + libvirt).

Here are my files as they are laid out in ~/tmp/terraform:

cloud_init.cfg:

#cloud-config
users:
  - name: ubuntu
    sudo: ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL
    groups: users, admin
    home: /home/ubuntu
    shell: /bin/bash
    ssh-authorized-keys:
      - ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAABAQCu/v1OUkTW/Nc8ARP/TIwx5OenXmAovr5k9uzIQ9F/ntnk9m00w/kxy/+fMXZ5m1q4ZuBByO40vP8VtCIZTH8DBxzXRhQgnjoYhE2ug5Byyg+wAoZz74Kigi513/plwL9KU50giP/oaqlzK7YwI3qdiEgJ66gOjVIqhbKShVmB1HJiBSm0B/zVGDLgRsQQmceNeKKSEnswjIxSz52ZutC2EEjIYIxD8dE7IdFrgWlsZjKA1g0iUIsVM1sVQoO7ltKhzKfeSHXvd3cMkNDMmFCQcWTk96QWG1lgGDBOCjGJ0lMbm9eG6ZuHG/LzrVcWZQA7pTQunDwYQycQRz/kcpxP [email protected]
ssh_pwauth: True
disable_root: false
chpasswd:
  list: |
     ubuntu:linux
  expire: False
package_update: true
packages:
    - qemu-guest-agent
growpart:
  mode: auto
  devices: ['/']

main.tf:

provider "template" {
  version = "~> 2.1"
}

# instance the provider
provider "libvirt" {
  uri = "qemu:///session"
}

# We fetch the latest ubuntu release image from their mirrors
resource "libvirt_volume" "ubuntu-qcow2" {
  name = "ubuntu-qcow2"
  pool = "images"
  source = "https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/xenial/release/ubuntu-16.04-server-cloudimg-amd64-disk1.img"
  format = "qcow2"
}

# Create a network for our VMs
resource "libvirt_network" "vm_network" {
   name = "vm_network"
   addresses = ["10.0.1.0/24"]
   dhcp {
	enabled = true
   }
}

# Use CloudInit to add our ssh-key to the instance
resource "libvirt_cloudinit_disk" "commoninit" {
          name = "commoninit.iso"
          pool = "images"
          user_data = "${data.template_file.user_data.rendered}"
          network_config = "${data.template_file.network_config.rendered}"
        }

data "template_file" "user_data" {
  template = "${file("${path.module}/cloud_init.cfg")}"
}

data "template_file" "network_config" {
  template = "${file("${path.module}/network_config.cfg")}"
}


# Create the machine
resource "libvirt_domain" "domain-ubuntu" {
  name = "ubuntu-terraform"
  memory = "512"
  vcpu = 1

  cloudinit = "${libvirt_cloudinit_disk.commoninit.id}"

  network_interface {
    network_id = "${libvirt_network.vm_network.id}"
    network_name = "vm_network"
  }

  # IMPORTANT
  # Ubuntu can hang is a isa-serial is not present at boot time.
  # If you find your CPU 100% and never is available this is why
  console {
    type        = "pty"
    target_port = "0"
    target_type = "serial"
  }

  console {
      type        = "pty"
      target_type = "virtio"
      target_port = "1"
  }

  disk {
       volume_id = "${libvirt_volume.ubuntu-qcow2.id}"
  }
  graphics {
    type = "spice"
    listen_type = "address"
    autoport = "true"
  }
}

network_config.cfg:

version: 2
ethernets:
  ens3:
     dhcp4: true

NB: When initially installing libvirt with brew install libvirt I had to also create a volume to store images. The Brew formula for libvirt on macOS doesn't create any volumes by default.

images-pool.xml:

<pool type="dir">
  <name>images</name>
  <target>
    <path>/usr/local/var/lib/libvirt/images/</path>
  </target>
</pool>

Steps to Reproduce Issue

Create the images volume:

$ virsh pool-create images-pool.xml

Run terraform init

$ terraform init

Run terraform apply:

$ terraform apply

After some time creating the cloudinit images you get the following error:

libvirt_volume.ubuntu-qcow2: Still creating... [7m40s elapsed]
libvirt_cloudinit_disk.commoninit: Still creating... [7m40s elapsed]
libvirt_volume.ubuntu-qcow2: Creation complete after 7m48s [id=/usr/local/var/lib/libvirt/images/ubuntu-qcow2]
libvirt_cloudinit_disk.commoninit: Creation complete after 7m48s [id=/usr/local/var/lib/libvirt/images/commoninit.iso;5d75bb7e-c58c-172b-6aa6-ac8e6b56e04b]

Error: Error defining libvirt network: virError(Code=3, Domain=19, Message='this function is not supported by the connection driver: virNetworkDefineXML') -   <network>
      <name>vm_network</name>
      <forward mode="nat"></forward>
      <bridge stp="on"></bridge>
      <dns enable="no"></dns>
      <ip address="10.0.1.1" family="ipv4" prefix="24">
          <dhcp>
              <range start="10.0.1.2" end="10.0.1.254"></range>
          </dhcp>
      </ip>
  </network>

  on main.tf line 19, in resource "libvirt_network" "vm_network":
  19: resource "libvirt_network" "vm_network" {

Additional information:

Do you have SELinux or Apparmor/Firewall enabled? Some special configuration? Have you tried to reproduce the issue without them enabled?

No, no and no.

Sep 09 '19 03:09 prologic

According to this (rather random unrelated find) unrelated issue it might be that libvirt isn't compiled with --with-virt-network -- So I'm giving that a go to see if that helps.

Sep 09 '19 03:09 prologic

Re-installed the provider and added --with-virt-network to libvirt and built form source.

$ terraform-provider-libvirt --version
terraform-provider-libvirt fc4f30356f23f52f8a5766abea327e61d90e08e3-dirty
Compiled against library: libvirt 5.7.0
Using library: libvirt 5.7.0
Running hypervisor: QEMU 4.1.0
Running against daemon: 5.7.0

Sep 09 '19 03:09 prologic

Probably helpful to know that virsh -V only reports "Remote Bridging" as a supported networking driver:

$ virsh -V
Virsh command line tool of libvirt 5.7.0
See web site at https://libvirt.org/

Compiled with support for:
 Hypervisors: QEMU/KVM VMware VirtualBox ESX Test
 Networking: Remote Bridging
 Storage: Dir
 Miscellaneous: Daemon Secrets Debug

Sep 09 '19 04:09 prologic

I'm having the exact same issue, some relevant things:

Output of virsh -V:

Virsh command line tool of libvirt 5.7.0
See web site at https://libvirt.org/

Compiled with support for:
 Hypervisors: QEMU/KVM VMware VirtualBox ESX Test
 Networking: Remote Bridging
 Storage: Dir
 Miscellaneous: Daemon Secrets Debug

Output of ll /Users/stevejobs/.cache/libvirt/:

total 0
drwx------  2 stevejobs  staff    64B 30 Sep 17:30 hostdevmgr
drwxr-xr-x  5 stevejobs  staff   160B 30 Sep 19:09 qemu
drwx------  3 stevejobs  staff    96B 30 Sep 17:30 secrets
drwxr-xr-x  3 stevejobs  staff    96B 30 Sep 17:30 storage
srwx------  1 stevejobs  staff     0B  1 Oct 17:16 virtlogd-admin-sock
srwx------  1 stevejobs  staff     0B  1 Oct 17:16 virtlogd-sock

No virtnetworkd-sock file.

Oct 01 '19 09:10 wbogocki

I have encountered the same issue. After some digging, I found that there is a description in libvirt configure .ac

dnl Make some notes about which OS we're compiling for, as the lxc and qemu
dnl drivers require linux headers, and storage_mpath, dtrace, and nwfilter
dnl are also linux specific.  The "network" and storage_fs drivers are known
dnl to not work on macOS presently, so we also make a note if compiling
dnl for that

Feb 19 '20 02:02 cclhsu

Hi, does this still happen with latest version?

Sep 17 '24 20:09 scabala

ℹ️ ℹ️ ℹ️ ℹ️ ℹ️ ℹ️

This issue report is relevant to the legacy version of the provider, which is now in the v0.8 branch of this repository.

Future development is based on a new provider, which is not compatible with this one, nor does share code.

As the new provider solves many issues with the legacy, and to make development in my free time more enjoyable, I have decided to close all bugs for the legacy provider, and to ask to check if the bug would apply to the new one. This also to encourage trying the new version.

https://registry.terraform.io/providers/dmacvicar/libvirt/latest

and check the documentation:

https://github.com/dmacvicar/terraform-provider-libvirt/blob/main/README.md
https://registry.terraform.io/providers/dmacvicar/libvirt/latest/docs

You are free to reopen the bug for v0.8. It may encourage someone to fix it. My efforts will go into the new provider.

I ask you to check the new provider and re-evaluate this bug. 🙏

Nov 08 '25 02:11 dmacvicar