How To Install qemu-guest-agent on Rocky Linux 8

In this tutorial we learn how to install qemu-guest-agent on Rocky Linux 8. qemu-guest-agent is QEMU guest agent

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install qemu-guest-agent on Rocky Linux 8.

What is `qemu-guest-agent`

qemu-kvm is an open source virtualizer that provides hardware emulation for the KVM hypervisor. This package provides an agent to run inside guests, which communicates with the host over a virtio-serial channel named “org.qemu.guest_agent.0” This package does not need to be installed on the host OS.

We can use yum or dnf to install qemu-guest-agent on Rocky Linux 8. In this tutorial we discuss both methods but you only need to choose one of method to install qemu-guest-agent.

Install qemu-guest-agent on Rocky Linux 8 Using dnf

Update yum database with dnf using the following command.

sudo dnf makecache --refresh

After updating yum database, We can install qemu-guest-agent using dnf by running the following command:

sudo dnf -y install qemu-guest-agent

Install qemu-guest-agent on Rocky Linux 8 Using yum

Update yum database with yum using the following command.

sudo yum makecache --refresh

After updating yum database, We can install qemu-guest-agent using yum by running the following command:

sudo yum -y install qemu-guest-agent

How To Uninstall qemu-guest-agent on Rocky Linux 8

To uninstall only the qemu-guest-agent package we can use the following command:

sudo dnf remove qemu-guest-agent

qemu-guest-agent Package Contents on Rocky Linux 8

/etc/qemu-ga
/etc/qemu-ga/fsfreeze-hook
/etc/qemu-ga/fsfreeze-hook.d
/etc/qemu-kvm/fsfreeze-hook
/etc/sysconfig/qemu-ga
/usr/bin/qemu-ga
/usr/lib/.build-id
/usr/lib/.build-id/36
/usr/lib/.build-id/36/24a21032da080519598cc97ef1bcbf78dac531
/usr/lib/systemd/system/qemu-guest-agent.service
/usr/lib/udev/rules.d/99-qemu-guest-agent.rules
/usr/share/doc/qemu-guest-agent
/usr/share/doc/qemu-guest-agent/COPYING
/usr/share/doc/qemu-guest-agent/README.rst
/usr/share/man/man8/qemu-ga.8.gz
/usr/share/qemu-kvm/qemu-ga
/usr/share/qemu-kvm/qemu-ga/fsfreeze-hook.d
/usr/share/qemu-kvm/qemu-ga/fsfreeze-hook.d/mysql-flush.sh.sample
/var/log/qemu-ga

References

qemu-guest-agent website

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install qemu-guest-agent on Rocky Linux 8 using yum and dnf.