"virsh list" command not showing VM created by "qemu-system-x86_64" command

Question

I created a VM using "qemu-system-x86_64" command. The VM is up and running. I can access it and list it by command "ps -ef | grep qemu-system-x86_64.

But if I try to list the VM using "virsh list" command then I do not see it there. Could you please point me what could be the reason?

Why is "virsh list" command not able to list VMs created by "qemu-system" command? I thought that virsh is an application that uses libvirt to access KVM/linux's virtualization capabilities. So even if VM is created by any method, then also virsh should be able to query KVM to check the already running VMs on the host.

Answer 1

qemu-system-x86_64 is a backend used by virsh to start a VM. Although qemu-system-x86_64 is libvirt-dependent, it does not register any running instances inside virsh/libvirtd metadata.