How To Install qemu-guest-agent on Ubuntu
Posted on April 1, 2023 (Last modified on May 20, 2023 )
3 minutes • 455 words
Introduction
In this tutorial we learn how to install qemu-guest-agent on Ubuntu.
What is qemu-guest-agent
qemu-guest-agent is:
QEMU is a fast processor emulator: currently the package supports ARM, CRIS, i386, M68k (ColdFire), MicroBlaze, MIPS, PowerPC, SH4, SPARC and x86-64 emulation. By using dynamic translation it achieves reasonable speed while being easy to port on new host CPUs.
This package provides a daemon (agent) to run inside qemu-system guests (full system emulation). It communicates with the host using a virtio-serial channel org.qemu.guest_agent.0, and allows one to perform some functions in the guest from the host, including:
- querying and setting guest system time
- performing guest filesystem sync operation
- initiating guest shutdown or suspend to ram
- accessing guest files
- freezing/thawing guest filesystem operations
- others.
Install this package on a system which is running as guest inside qemu virtual machine. It is not used on the host.
There are three methods to install qemu-guest-agent on Ubuntu. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.
Install qemu-guest-agent Using apt-get
Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.
sudo apt-get update
After updating apt database, We can install qemu-guest-agent using apt-get by running the following command:
sudo apt-get -y install qemu-guest-agent
Install qemu-guest-agent Using apt
Update apt database with apt using the following command.
sudo apt update
After updating apt database, We can install qemu-guest-agent using apt by running the following command:
sudo apt -y install qemu-guest-agent
Install qemu-guest-agent Using aptitude
If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Ubuntu. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.
sudo aptitude update
After updating apt database, We can install qemu-guest-agent using aptitude by running the following command:
sudo aptitude -y install qemu-guest-agent
How To Uninstall qemu-guest-agent on Ubuntu
To uninstall only the qemu-guest-agent package we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get remove qemu-guest-agent
Uninstall qemu-guest-agent And Its Dependencies
To uninstall qemu-guest-agent and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Ubuntu, we can use the command below:
sudo apt-get -y autoremove qemu-guest-agent
Remove qemu-guest-agent Configurations and Data
To remove qemu-guest-agent configuration and data from Ubuntu we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get -y purge qemu-guest-agent
Remove qemu-guest-agent configuration, data, and all of its dependencies
We can use the following command to remove qemu-guest-agent configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge qemu-guest-agent
Dependencies
qemu-guest-agent have the following dependencies:
References
Summary
In this tutorial we learn how to install qemu-guest-agent package on Ubuntu using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.