Ubuntu 14.04 KVM - error: internal error: process exited while connecting to monitor: qemu-system-x86_64:

Turning the computer off and on again (I hadn't rebooted since installing kvm) changed the error message to:

error: internal error: process exited while connecting to monitor: qemu-system-x86_64

When Googling that error, I found this post which recommended adding the following to

user = "root"
group = "root"

to the /etc/libvirt/qemu.conf file. Be sure to include the quotes.

After another reboot, I was able to run virsh create [guest-id].xml successfully.

I had a similar problem.

Adding my user to the kvm group

sudo usermod -a -G kvm username

Then I made sure that /dev/kvm is owned by root and group kvm

Afterwards I changed the ownership of my existing VM (converted from VirtualBox) to username:kvm

Finally I set group=kvm user=username in my qemu.conf This fixed it for me