I used virt-manager to create a local vm to build a debian guest. I usually use vm-builder, but it doesn’t support debian at this time.

I was a little confused at first why I could see the vm in virt-manager, but the xml file wasn’t in /etc/libvirt/qemu nor could I see it in virsh.

virt-manager appears to have a connection open by default called “localhost (User)”, as opposed to “localhost (System)” which you need to open a new connection to localhost from the menu to access. The latter is what you connect to when you run virsh. To make the former connection run ‘virsh –connect qemu:///session’, as opposed to ‘virsh –connect qemu:///system’ which is the default.

System vm’s are stored in ‘/etc/libvirt/qemu’, user vm’s are stored in ‘~/.libvirt/qemu’.