I'm using dnsmasq as DHCP server in VM environment. But It didn't working. I disabled basic DHCP feature in libvirt. <network> <name>default</name> <uuid>84da0678-e56d-8fc2-6f8b-e8eba784849a</uuid> <forward mode='nat'/> <bridge name='virbr0' stp='on' delay='0' /> <mac address='52:54:00:7B:64:0B'/> <ip address='192.168.122.1' netmask='255.255.255.0'> </ip> </network> As you can see, I removed this tag! <dhcp> <range start='192.168.122.2' end='192.168.122.254' /> </dhcp> And I installed dnsmasq in Host machine. During installation dnsmasq, there was an error message about 127.0.0.1.(dnsmasq: failed to create listening socket for 127.0.0.1) So I commented out listen-address option, and added dhcp-range/dhcp-option options, like this. listen-address=127.0.0.1 dhcp-range=192.168.122.100,192.168.122.200,24h dhcp-option=option:router,192.168.122.1 That's all I've done with dnsmasq. But guest VM couldn't get IP address from host which is dnsmasq server running. After that , I installed isc-dhcp-server instead of dnsmasq.... and it works! But I still want to use dnsmasq instead of isc-dhcp-server. Are there any helping hands? I disabled host machine's firewall. I've heard that libvirt basically use dnsmasq. Is this the reason why I couldn't use dnsmasq in libvirt environment?