Description of problem: virt-manager is a symlink to consolehelper, so even connecting to remote URIs requires root. This should not be, beacause you might just want to connect to some remote machine, so just using virt-manager as some client, that shall not require local root privileges. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): current f 7 packages. How reproducible: Run "virt-manager -c qemu+ssh://usr@somehost:22/system" you get a prompt to enter your root password. Steps to Reproduce: See above. Actual results: You need to enter a root password. Expected results: virt-manager connects to the remote host, just asking for your remote password via ssh. Additional info:
We need to use console helper so that when managing a local hypervisor is possible for virt-manager to create new guests. To allow virt-manager to run as non-root we need to make sure we can still fully manage local guests. This requires introduction of new APIs in libvirt & integration with PolicyKit. This is work in progress. In the meantime you can simply hit the 'Run unprivileged' button if you want to run non-root.
Hi, virt-manager PolicyKit integration has been in F8 for a few months. With a proper PolicyKit.conf, regular users will be able to connect to remote hypervisors no problem. This won't be backported to Fedora 7 though, since it is nearly end of life. I'm closing this bug as CURRENTRELEASE.