2.56. net-autostart

Enables or disables the automatic startup of a persistent virtual network, by the libvirt daemon.

Usage

net-autostart --network network-identifier --disable

Options

Name	Required?	Description
`--network` `network-identifier`	required	The name or UUID for the virtual network being configured. The word "--network" itself is optional.
`--disable`	optional	Disables the automatic starting of the virtual network.

Table 2.2. Options

Availability

Available from libvirt 0.2.1 onwards

Platform or Hypervisor specific notes

None yet

Examples

virsh # net-autostart default --disable

Stops the virtual network named "default" from automatically starting when the libvirt daemon starts.

virsh # net-autostart --network default --disable

Same as the above example.

virsh # net-autostart bfbc4c69-7d6a-cc9a-904c-09910ce179c0 --disable

Stops the virtual network with UUID "bfbc4c69-7d6a-cc9a-904c-09910ce179c0" from automatically starting when the libvirt daemon starts.

virsh # net-autostart --network bfbc4c69-7d6a-cc9a-904c-09910ce179c0 --disable

Same as the above example.

virsh # net-autostart default

Enables the automatic starting of the virtual network named "default", by the libvirt daemon when it starts.

virsh # net-autostart --network default

Same as the above example.

Example in context

Starting with an XML file we've already created, using the required XML format:

<network>
  <name>examplenetwork</name>
  <bridge name="virbr100" />
  <forward mode="route" />
  <ip address="10.10.120.1" netmask="255.255.255.0" />
</network>

# ls -al /root/examplenetwork.xml
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 162 Nov  7 16:43 /root/examplenetwork.xml

We start virsh interactively, then define a persistent virtual network:

# virsh
Welcome to virsh, the virtualization interactive terminal.

Type:  'help' for help with commands
       'quit' to quit

virsh # net-list
Name                 State      Autostart
-----------------------------------------
default              active     yes

virsh # net-define /root/examplenetwork.xml
Network examplenetwork defined from /root/examplenetwork.xml

Newly defined virtual networks aren't set to automatically be started, as can be seen here:

virsh # net-list --all
Name                 State      Autostart
-----------------------------------------
default              active     yes
examplenetwork       inactive   no    <-- this is the important piece

We enable automatic starting for it:

virsh # net-autostart examplenetwork
Network examplenetwork marked as autostarted

Checking, to make sure:

virsh # net-list --all
Name                 State      Autostart
-----------------------------------------
default              active     yes
examplenetwork       inactive   yes    <-- this is the important piece

From now on, whenever the libvirt daemon is started, it will automatically start this virtual network too (unless it's already running). If at some point we want to turn off automatic starting of the virtual network, we use the --disable option to the command:

# net-autostart --disable examplenetwork
Network examplenetwork unmarked as autostarted

virsh # net-list --all
Name                 State      Autostart
-----------------------------------------
default              active     yes
examplenetwork       inactive   no    <-- this is the important piece

See also

net-dumpxml - Outputs the XML configuration for a virtual network, to stdout.
net-list - Lists the virtual networks libvirt is aware of.