Created attachment 1512922 [details] debug outputs Description of problem: [readlegal@morgansmachine home_disk-image-files]$ sudo virt-sparsify --compress --tmp /home/tmp Win7.gcow2 Win7_virt-sparsify.gcow2 [ 0.0] Create overlay file in /home/tmp to protect source disk [ 0.1] Examine source disk virt-sparsify: error: libguestfs error: could not create appliance through libvirt. Try running qemu directly without libvirt using this environment variable: export LIBGUESTFS_BACKEND=direct Original error from libvirt: Cannot access backing file '/run/media/readlegal/Backup/home_disk-image-files/Win7.gcow2' of storage file '/home/tmp/sparsify8844c2.qcow2' (as uid:107, gid:107): Permission denied [code=38 int1=13] If reporting bugs, run virt-sparsify with debugging enabled and include the complete output: virt-sparsify -v -x [...] [readlegal@morgansmachine home_disk-image-files]$ Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): $ virt-sparsify --version virt-sparsify 1.38.6fedora=28,release=1.fc28,libvirt How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. make tmp file somewhere with enough space 2.run virt-sparsify 3. Actual results: success Expected results: failure Additional info:
This is another manifestation of https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=890291 When libvirt is run as root, it runs qemu as a non-root qemu.qemu user which cannot access everything that root can. One solution here is *not* to run virt-sparsify as root at all, since it doesn't need to be. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 890291 ***