QEMU-GA.8(8)

NAME
qemu-ga - QEMU Guest Agent

SYNOPSIS
qemu-ga [OPTIONS]

DESCRIPTION
The QEMU Guest Agent is a daemon intended to be run within virtual machines. It allows the hypervisor host to perform various operations in the guest, such as:

•   get information from the guest

•   set the guest's system time

•   read/write a file

•   sync and freeze the filesystems

•   suspend the guest

•   reconfigure guest local processors

•   set user's password

•   ...

qemu-ga will read a system configuration file on startup (located at /etc/qemu/qemu-ga.conf by default), then parse remaining configuration options on the command line. For the same key, the last option wins, but the lists accumulate (see below for configuration file format).

OPTIONS

-m, --method=method
      Transport method: one of B<unix-listen>, B<virtio-serial>, or
      B<isa-serial> (B<virtio-serial> is the default).

-p, --path=path
      Device/socket path (the default for virtio-serial is
      B</dev/virtio-ports/org.qemu.guest_agent.0>,
      the default for isa-serial is B</dev/ttyS0>)

-l, --logfile=path
      Set log file path (default is stderr).

-f, --pidfile=path
      Specify pid file (default is B</var/run/qemu-ga.pid>).

-F, --fsfreeze-hook=path
      Enable fsfreeze hook. Accepts an optional argument that specifies
      script to run on freeze/thaw. Script will be called with
      'freeze'/'thaw' arguments accordingly (default is
      B</etc/qemu/fsfreeze-hook>). If using -F with an argument, do
      not follow -F with a space (for example:
      B<-F/var/run/fsfreezehook.sh>).

-t, --statedir=path
      Specify the directory to store state information (absolute paths only,
      default is B</var/run>).

-v, --verbose
      Log extra debugging information.

-V, --version
      Print version information and exit.

-d, --daemon
      Daemonize after startup (detach from terminal).

-b, --blacklist=list
      Comma-separated list of RPCs to disable (no spaces, B<?> to list
      available RPCs).

-D, --dump-conf
      Dump the configuration in a format compatible with F<qemu-ga.conf>
      and exit.

-h, --help
      Display this help and exit.

FILES
The syntax of the qemu-ga.conf configuration file follows the Desktop Entry Specification, here is a quick summary: it consists of groups of key-value pairs, interspersed with comments.

        # qemu-ga configuration sample
        [general]
        daemonize = 0
        pidfile = /var/run/qemu-ga.pid
        verbose = 0
        method = virtio-serial
        path = /dev/virtio-ports/org.qemu.guest_agent.0
        statedir = /var/run

The list of keys follows the command line options:

daemon= boolean
method= string
path= string
logfile= string
pidfile= string
fsfreeze-hook= string
statedir= string
verbose= boolean
blacklist= string list

SEE ALSO
qemu(1)

AUTHOR
Michael Roth <mdroth@linux.vnet.ibm.com>