How to allow regular users to fully control virtual machines under RHEL6 KVM hypervisor?

Solution Unverified - Updated -

Issue

  • How to allow regular users to fully control virtual machines under RHEL6 KVM hypervisor?

  • Running virt-manager by an unprivilged user after logging in via ssh ends up in the below erro rmessage instead of prompting for the root password and getting authenticated.

    Unable to open connection to hypervisor URI 'qemu///system':
    authentication failed
    Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "/usr/share/virt-manager/virtManager/connection.py", line 992, in _try_open
     None], flags)
    FIle "/usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/libvirt.py", line 111, in openAuth
      if ret is None:rais libvirtError ('virConnectOpenAuth() failed')
    libvirtError: authentication failed
    
  • Along with the below error mesage in /var/log/messages:

    Jan 21 14:10:15 truman libvirtd: 14:10:15.403: error : remoteDispatchAuthPolkit:3799 : Policy kit denied action org.libvirt.unix.manage from pid 5091, uid 500, result: 256
    
  • However this does not happen if root directly ssh to the system and launch virt-manager.

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
  • libvirt
  • virt-manager
  • virsh

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