I ran into this problem too, and I was able to troubleshoot it.
To the best of my understanding, this is caused by: https://github.com/libvirt/libvirt/commit/64b966558cc6002fe150a0292a24eb2802a792c5#diff-69678f99af3e2f578ab1665eaaf3423314b3aa01a6e0b09a085b049e82b17903R102 case VIR_FIREWALL_BACKEND_IPTABLES: { g_autofree char *iptablesInPath = virFindFileInPath(IPTABLES); if (iptablesInPath) fwBackendSelected = true; break; } Libvirt is searching the PATH for a program named 'iptables', and failing because: * iptables is in /usr/sbin * /usr/sbin is not in the PATH for non-root users Libvirtd now also supports nftables, but that fails for the same reason. I don't know what is the most appropriate solution to this. As a workaround, it is possible to override the PATH; for example: PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH virsh list After running this once, a libvirt daemon should remain resident, so future virsh commands should not need the workaround, at least until the daemon exits for any reason. -Corey
