10.3. Running the QEMU Guest Agent on a Windows Guest

Procedure 10.2. Configuring the QEMU guest agent on a Windows guest

1. Prepare the Red Hat Enterprise Linux host machine

   Make sure the following package is installed on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux host physical machine:
   • virtio-win, located in /usr/share/virtio-win/
   To copy the drivers in the Windows guest, make an *.iso file for the qxl driver using the following command:

   # mkisofs -o /var/lib/libvirt/images/virtiowin.iso /usr/share/virtio-win/drivers

2. Prepare the Windows guest

   Install the virtio-serial driver in guest by mounting the *.iso to the Windows guest in order to update the driver. Start the guest, then attach the driver .iso file to the guest as shown (using a disk named hdb):

   # virsh attach-disk guest /var/lib/libvirt/images/virtiowin.iso hdb

   To install the drivers using the Windows Control Panel, navigate to the following menus:
   • To install the virtio-win driver - Select Hardware and Sound > Device manager > virtio-serial driver.

3. Update the Windows guest XML configuration file

   The guest XML file for the Windows guest is located on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux host machine. To gain access to this file, you need the Windows guest name. Use the # virsh list command on the host machine to list the guests that it can recognize. In this example, the guest's name is win7x86.
   Add the following elements to the XML file using the # virsh edit win7x86 command and save the changes. Note that the source socket name must be unique in the host, named win7x86.agent in this example:

      ...
     <channel type='unix'>
         <source mode='bind' path='/var/lib/libvirt/qemu/win7x86.agent'/>
         <target type='virtio' name='org.qemu.guest_agent.0'/>
         <address type='virtio-serial' controller='0' bus='0' port='1'/>
      </channel>
      <channel type='spicevmc'>
         <target type='virtio' name='com.redhat.spice.0'/>
         <address type='virtio-serial' controller='0' bus='0' port='2'/>
      </channel>
      ...
   
   
   

   Figure 10.2. Editing the Windows guest XML to configure the QEMU guest agent

4. Reboot the Windows guest

   Reboot the Windows guest to apply the changes:

   # virsh reboot win7x86

5. Prepare the QEMU guest agent in the Windows guest

   To prepare the guest agent in a Windows guest:

   1. Install the latest virtio-win package

      Run the following command on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux host physical machine terminal window to locate the file to install. Note that the file shown below may not be exactly the same as the one your system finds, but it should be latest official version.

      # rpm -qa|grep virtio-win
      virtio-win-1.6.8-5.el6.noarch
      
      # rpm -iv virtio-win-1.6.8-5.el6.noarch

   2. Confirm the installation completed

      After the virtio-win package finishes installing, check the /usr/share/virtio-win/guest-agent/ folder and you will find an file named qemu-ga-x64.msi or the qemu-ga-x86.msi as shown:

      # ls -l /usr/share/virtio-win/guest-agent/
      
      total 1544
      
      -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 856064 Oct 23 04:58 qemu-ga-x64.msi
      
      -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 724992 Oct 23 04:58 qemu-ga-x86.msi
      
      

   3. Install the .msi file

      From the Windows guest (win7x86, for example) install the qemu-ga-x64.msi or the qemu-ga-x86.msi by double clicking on the file. Once installed, it will be shown as a qemu-ga service in the Windows guest within the System Manager. This same manager can be used to monitor the status of the service.