I tried creating several KVM domains with non-alnum names to see what actually happens. The names as shown here are XML-encoded, ie. they are how they appear in the libvirt domain XML. *** <name>�</name> *** libvirt prevents me from defining this domain, with the following error: error: Failed to define domain from /tmp/chars.xml error: at line 2: xmlParseCharRef: invalid xmlChar value 0 Am I specifying the XML correctly? *** <name>#</name> *** virsh define - OK virsh list - OK virsh start - OK virt-viewer - OK virt-df - OK virsh destroy - OK virt-list-filesystems - OK Conclusion: RHBZ#639601 and RHBZ#639602 are just user error. The reporter is typing something like: virt-list-filesystems # but the shell takes the # character as a comment. If instead you do: virt-list-filesystems '#' or virt-list-filesystems \# then it works fine. *** <name>,</name> *** virsh define - OK virsh list - OK virsh start - FAILED virt-viewer - n/a virt-df - OK virsh destroy - n/a virt-list-filesystems - OK virsh start failed with the error: error: Failed to start domain , error: internal error process exited while connecting to monitor: Unknown subargument to -name This looks like a real bug. The qemu driver should prevent domains from being created that contain characters that are special for the qemu command line. *** <name>></name> *** virsh define - OK virsh list - OK virsh start - OK virt-viewer - OK virt-df - OK virsh destroy - OK virt-list-filesystems - OK *** <name>åã</name> *** virsh define - OK virsh list - see below virsh start - OK virt-viewer - OK virt-df - OK virsh destroy - OK virt-list-filesystems - OK 'virsh list' command is fine, except the 'State' columns don't line up because these two characters are wide chars. You see something like this: - Win7x32 shut off - [][] shut off *** <name>/</name> *** virsh define - OK virsh list - OK virsh start - see below virt-viewer - OK virt-df - FAILED virsh destroy - OK virt-list-filesystems - FAILED The domain starts OK, but the log file is created as "/var/log/libvirt/qemu/.log". This is a bug, although sort of to be expected. virt-df and virt-list-filesystems both failed. This was because these programs use a heuristic to determine if the parameter passed is a libvirt domain name or a local disk image file. Because "/" looks (a bit) like a local file, it tries to open it as such and fails. The error message is: qemu: could not open disk image /: Is a directory unexpected end of file when reading from daemon at /usr/bin/virt-list-filesystems line 131. I think realistically libvirt should prevent domains with / anywhere in the name from being defined. *** <name>:</name> *** virsh define - OK virsh list - OK virsh start - OK virt-viewer - OK virt-df - OK virsh destroy - OK virt-list-filesystems - OK * * * I will file bugs for the above issues. Rich. -- Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones virt-df lists disk usage of guests without needing to install any software inside the virtual machine. Supports Linux and Windows. http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-df/ -- libvir-list mailing list libvir-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/libvir-list