B.15. No Guest Virtual Machines are Present when libvirtd is Started

Symptom
The libvirt daemon is successfully started, but no guest virtual machines appear to be present. 
# virsh list --all
 Id    Name                           State
----------------------------------------------------
#
Investigation
There are various possible causes of this problem. Performing these tests will help to determine the cause of this situation:
Verify KVM kernel modules
Verify that KVM kernel modules are inserted in the kernel: 
# lsmod | grep kvm
kvm_intel             121346  0
kvm                   328927  1 kvm_intel
If you are using an AMD machine, verify the kvm_amd kernel modules are inserted in the kernel instead, using the similar command lsmod | grep kvm_amd in the root shell.
If the modules are not present, insert them using the modprobe <modulename> command.

Note

Although it is uncommon, KVM virtualization support may be compiled into the kernel. In this case, modules are not needed.
Verify virtualization extensions
Verify that virtualization extensions are supported and enabled on the host: 
# egrep "(vmx|svm)" /proc/cpuinfo
flags		: fpu vme de pse tsc ... svm ... skinit wdt npt lbrv svm_lock nrip_save
flags		: fpu vme de pse tsc ... svm ... skinit wdt npt lbrv svm_lock nrip_save
Enable virtualization extensions in your hardware's firmware configuration within the BIOS setup. Refer to your hardware documentation for further details on this.
Verify client URI configuration
Verify that the URI of the client is configured as desired: 
# virsh uri
vbox:///system
For example, this message shows the URI is connected to the VirtualBox hypervisor, not QEMU, and reveals a configuration error for a URI that is otherwise set to connect to a QEMU hypervisor. If the URI was correctly connecting to QEMU, the same message would appear instead as: 
# virsh uri
qemu:///system
This situation occurs when there are other hypervisors present, which libvirt may speak to by default.
Solution
After performing these tests, use the following command to view a list of guest virtual machines: 
# virsh list --all