How to install Qemu guest agent for CentOS

Install Qemu guest agent for centOS

Prerequisites

• A VPS, Pure Performance VPS or Dedicated Server from Snel.com
  running CentOS or another Red Hat–based distribution.
• SSH access to the server with a user that has root or sudo privileges.
  If you don’t know how to connect, please follow this article
• A recent backup or snapshot of your server before installing new packages.
  You can create a snapshot by following this guide
• Basic familiarity with running commands in a Linux shell (SSH terminal).

In this article, we will help you to install the Qemu guest agent on your virtual private server. This agent is a helper daemon that exchanges information between the quest and the host and executes commands in the guest for snapshot or backup. The guest agent is used for mainly two things one for properly shut down the guest and the second is to freeze the guest file system when making a backup.

Step 1: Log in using SSH

You must be logged in via SSH as sudo or root user. Please read this article for instructions if you don’t know how to connect.

Step 2: Install qemu guest agent

yum install qemu-guest-agent

Step 3: Start qemu guest agent

The guest may not start automatically after installation. You can start it manually with the following command:

systemctl start qemu-guest-agent

Step 4: Verify

Verify that the Qemu quest agent is running.

systemctl status qemu-guest-agent

Conclusion

Congratulations,  you have installed the Qemu guest agent on your Redhat based system.