GSP
Quick Navigator
Search Site

Unix VPS
A - Starter
B - Basic
C - Preferred
D - Commercial
MPS - Dedicated
Previous VPSs
* Sign Up! *

Support
Contact Us
Online Help
Handbooks
Domain Status
Man Pages

FAQ
Virtual Servers
Pricing
Billing
Technical

Network
Facilities
Connectivity
Topology Map

Miscellaneous
Server Agreement
Year 2038
Credits
 

USA Flag

 

 

Man Pages
QEMU-GA-REF(7) QEMU QEMU-GA-REF(7)

qemu-ga-ref - QEMU Guest Agent Protocol Reference

"unsupported" is a higher-level error than the errors that individual commands might document. The caller should always be prepared to receive QERR_UNSUPPORTED, even if the given command doesn't specify it, or doesn't document any failure mode at all.

Echo back a unique integer value, and prepend to response a leading sentinel byte (0xFF) the client can check scan for.

This is used by clients talking to the guest agent over the wire to ensure the stream is in sync and doesn't contain stale data from previous client. It must be issued upon initial connection, and after any client-side timeouts (including timeouts on receiving a response to this command).

After issuing this request, all guest agent responses should be ignored until the response containing the unique integer value the client passed in is returned. Receival of the 0xFF sentinel byte must be handled as an indication that the client's lexer/tokenizer/parser state should be flushed/reset in preparation for reliably receiving the subsequent response. As an optimization, clients may opt to ignore all data until a sentinel value is receiving to avoid unnecessary processing of stale data.

Similarly, clients should also precede this request with a 0xFF byte to make sure the guest agent flushes any partially read JSON data from a previous client connection.

id: int
randomly generated 64-bit integer

The unique integer id passed in by the client

1.1

Echo back a unique integer value

This is used by clients talking to the guest agent over the wire to ensure the stream is in sync and doesn't contain stale data from previous client. All guest agent responses should be ignored until the provided unique integer value is returned, and it is up to the client to handle stale whole or partially-delivered JSON text in such a way that this response can be obtained.

In cases where a partial stale response was previously received by the client, this cannot always be done reliably. One particular scenario being if qemu-ga responses are fed character-by-character into a JSON parser. In these situations, using guest-sync-delimited may be optimal.

For clients that fetch responses line by line and convert them to JSON objects, guest-sync should be sufficient, but note that in cases where the channel is dirty some attempts at parsing the response may result in a parser error.

Such clients should also precede this command with a 0xFF byte to make sure the guest agent flushes any partially read JSON data from a previous session.

id: int
randomly generated 64-bit integer

The unique integer id passed in by the client

0.15.0

Ping the guest agent, a non-error return implies success

0.15.0

Get the information about guest's System Time relative to the Epoch of 1970-01-01 in UTC.

Time in nanoseconds.

1.5

Set guest time.

When a guest is paused or migrated to a file then loaded from that file, the guest OS has no idea that there was a big gap in the time. Depending on how long the gap was, NTP might not be able to resynchronize the guest.

This command tries to set guest's System Time to the given value, then sets the Hardware Clock (RTC) to the current System Time. This will make it easier for a guest to resynchronize without waiting for NTP. If no time is specified, then the time to set is read from RTC. However, this may not be supported on all platforms (i.e. Windows). If that's the case users are advised to always pass a value.

time: int (optional)
time of nanoseconds, relative to the Epoch of 1970-01-01 in UTC.

Nothing on success.

1.5

Information about guest agent commands.

name: string
name of the command
enabled: boolean
whether command is currently enabled by guest admin
success-response: boolean
whether command returns a response on success (since 1.7)

1.1.0

Information about guest agent.

version: string
guest agent version
supported_commands: array of GuestAgentCommandInfo
Information about guest agent commands

0.15.0

Get some information about the guest agent.

GuestAgentInfo

0.15.0

Initiate guest-activated shutdown. Note: this is an asynchronous shutdown request, with no guarantee of successful shutdown.

mode: string (optional)
"halt", "powerdown" (default), or "reboot"

This command does NOT return a response on success. Success condition is indicated by the VM exiting with a zero exit status or, when running with --no-shutdown, by issuing the query-status QMP command to confirm the VM status is "shutdown".

0.15.0

Open a file in the guest and retrieve a file handle for it

path: string
Full path to the file in the guest to open.
mode: string (optional)
open mode, as per fopen(), "r" is the default.

Guest file handle on success.

0.15.0

Close an open file in the guest

handle: int
filehandle returned by guest-file-open

Nothing on success.

0.15.0

Result of guest agent file-read operation

count: int
number of bytes read (note: count is before base64-encoding is applied)
buf-b64: string
base64-encoded bytes read
eof: boolean
whether EOF was encountered during read operation.

0.15.0

Read from an open file in the guest. Data will be base64-encoded. As this command is just for limited, ad-hoc debugging, such as log file access, the number of bytes to read is limited to 48 MB.

handle: int
filehandle returned by guest-file-open
count: int (optional)
maximum number of bytes to read (default is 4KB, maximum is 48MB)

GuestFileRead on success.

0.15.0

Result of guest agent file-write operation

count: int
number of bytes written (note: count is actual bytes written, after base64-decoding of provided buffer)
eof: boolean
whether EOF was encountered during write operation.

0.15.0

Write to an open file in the guest.

handle: int
filehandle returned by guest-file-open
buf-b64: string
base64-encoded string representing data to be written
count: int (optional)
bytes to write (actual bytes, after base64-decode), default is all content in buf-b64 buffer after base64 decoding

GuestFileWrite on success.

0.15.0

Result of guest agent file-seek operation

position: int
current file position
eof: boolean
whether EOF was encountered during file seek

0.15.0

Symbolic names for use in guest-file-seek

set
Set to the specified offset (same effect as 'whence':0)
cur
Add offset to the current location (same effect as 'whence':1)
end
Add offset to the end of the file (same effect as 'whence':2)

2.6

Controls the meaning of offset to guest-file-seek.

value: int
Integral value (0 for set, 1 for cur, 2 for end), available for historical reasons, and might differ from the host's or guest's SEEK_* values (since: 0.15)
name: QGASeek
Symbolic name, and preferred interface

2.6

Seek to a position in the file, as with fseek(), and return the current file position afterward. Also encapsulates ftell()'s functionality, with offset=0 and whence=1.

handle: int
filehandle returned by guest-file-open
offset: int
bytes to skip over in the file stream
whence: GuestFileWhence
Symbolic or numeric code for interpreting offset

GuestFileSeek on success.

0.15.0

Write file changes bufferred in userspace to disk/kernel buffers

handle: int
filehandle returned by guest-file-open

Nothing on success.

0.15.0

An enumeration of filesystem freeze states

thawed
filesystems thawed/unfrozen
frozen
all non-network guest filesystems frozen

0.15.0

Get guest fsfreeze state. error state indicates

GuestFsfreezeStatus ("thawed", "frozen", etc., as defined below)

This may fail to properly report the current state as a result of some other guest processes having issued an fs freeze/thaw.

0.15.0

Sync and freeze all freezable, local guest filesystems. If this command succeeded, you may call guest-fsfreeze-thaw later to unfreeze.

On Windows, the command is implemented with the help of a Volume Shadow-copy Service DLL helper. The frozen state is limited for up to 10 seconds by VSS.

Number of file systems currently frozen. On error, all filesystems will be thawed. If no filesystems are frozen as a result of this call, then guest-fsfreeze-status will remain "thawed" and calling guest-fsfreeze-thaw is not necessary.

0.15.0

Sync and freeze specified guest filesystems. See also guest-fsfreeze-freeze.

mountpoints: array of string (optional)
an array of mountpoints of filesystems to be frozen. If omitted, every mounted filesystem is frozen. Invalid mount points are ignored.

Number of file systems currently frozen. On error, all filesystems will be thawed.

2.2

Unfreeze all frozen guest filesystems

Number of file systems thawed by this call

if return value does not match the previous call to guest-fsfreeze-freeze, this likely means some freezable filesystems were unfrozen before this call, and that the filesystem state may have changed before issuing this command.

0.15.0

path: string
path that was trimmed
error: string (optional)
an error message when trim failed
trimmed: int (optional)
bytes trimmed for this path
minimum: int (optional)
reported effective minimum for this path

2.4

paths: array of GuestFilesystemTrimResult
list of GuestFilesystemTrimResult per path that was trimmed

2.4

Discard (or "trim") blocks which are not in use by the filesystem.

minimum: int (optional)
Minimum contiguous free range to discard, in bytes. Free ranges smaller than this may be ignored (this is a hint and the guest may not respect it). By increasing this value, the fstrim operation will complete more quickly for filesystems with badly fragmented free space, although not all blocks will be discarded. The default value is zero, meaning "discard every free block".

A GuestFilesystemTrimResponse which contains the status of all trimmed paths. (since 2.4)

1.2

Suspend guest to disk.

This command attempts to suspend the guest using three strategies, in this order:

  • systemd hibernate
  • pm-utils (via pm-hibernate)
  • manual write into sysfs

This command does NOT return a response on success. There is a high chance the command succeeded if the VM exits with a zero exit status or, when running with --no-shutdown, by issuing the query-status QMP command to to confirm the VM status is "shutdown". However, the VM could also exit (or set its status to "shutdown") due to other reasons.

The following errors may be returned:

•
If suspend to disk is not supported, Unsupported

It's strongly recommended to issue the guest-sync command before sending commands when the guest resumes

1.1

Suspend guest to ram.

This command attempts to suspend the guest using three strategies, in this order:

  • systemd suspend
  • pm-utils (via pm-suspend)
  • manual write into sysfs

IMPORTANT: guest-suspend-ram requires working wakeup support in QEMU. You should check QMP command query-current-machine returns wakeup-suspend-support: true before issuing this command. Failure in doing so can result in a suspended guest that QEMU will not be able to awaken, forcing the user to power cycle the guest to bring it back.

This command does NOT return a response on success. There are two options to check for success:

1.
Wait for the SUSPEND QMP event from QEMU
2.
Issue the query-status QMP command to confirm the VM status is "suspended"

The following errors may be returned:

•
If suspend to ram is not supported, Unsupported

It's strongly recommended to issue the guest-sync command before sending commands when the guest resumes

1.1

Save guest state to disk and suspend to ram.

This command attempts to suspend the guest by executing, in this order:

  • systemd hybrid-sleep
  • pm-utils (via pm-suspend-hybrid)

IMPORTANT: guest-suspend-hybrid requires working wakeup support in QEMU. You should check QMP command query-current-machine returns wakeup-suspend-support: true before issuing this command. Failure in doing so can result in a suspended guest that QEMU will not be able to awaken, forcing the user to power cycle the guest to bring it back.

This command does NOT return a response on success. There are two options to check for success:

1.
Wait for the SUSPEND QMP event from QEMU
2.
Issue the query-status QMP command to confirm the VM status is "suspended"

The following errors may be returned:

•
If hybrid suspend is not supported, Unsupported

It's strongly recommended to issue the guest-sync command before sending commands when the guest resumes

1.1

An enumeration of supported IP address types

ipv4
IP version 4
ipv6
IP version 6

1.1

ip-address: string
IP address
ip-address-type: GuestIpAddressType
Type of ip-address (e.g. ipv4, ipv6)
prefix: int
Network prefix length of ip-address

1.1

rx-bytes: int
total bytes received
rx-packets: int
total packets received
rx-errs: int
bad packets received
rx-dropped: int
receiver dropped packets
tx-bytes: int
total bytes transmitted
tx-packets: int
total packets transmitted
tx-errs: int
packet transmit problems
tx-dropped: int
dropped packets transmitted

2.11

name: string
The name of interface for which info are being delivered
hardware-address: string (optional)
Hardware address of name
ip-addresses: array of GuestIpAddress (optional)
List of addresses assigned to name
statistics: GuestNetworkInterfaceStat (optional)
various statistic counters related to name (since 2.11)

1.1

Get list of guest IP addresses, MAC addresses and netmasks.

List of GuestNetworkInfo on success.

1.1

logical-id: int
Arbitrary guest-specific unique identifier of the VCPU.
online: boolean
Whether the VCPU is enabled.
can-offline: boolean (optional)
Whether offlining the VCPU is possible. This member is always filled in by the guest agent when the structure is returned, and always ignored on input (hence it can be omitted then).

1.5

Retrieve the list of the guest's logical processors.

This is a read-only operation.

The list of all VCPUs the guest knows about. Each VCPU is put on the list exactly once, but their order is unspecified.

1.5

Attempt to reconfigure (currently: enable/disable) logical processors inside the guest.

The input list is processed node by node in order. In each node logical-id is used to look up the guest VCPU, for which online specifies the requested state. The set of distinct logical-id's is only required to be a subset of the guest-supported identifiers. There's no restriction on list length or on repeating the same logical-id (with possibly different online field). Preferably the input list should describe a modified subset of guest-get-vcpus' return value.

vcpus: array of GuestLogicalProcessor
Not documented

The length of the initial sublist that has been successfully processed. The guest agent maximizes this value. Possible cases:
  • 0: if the vcpus list was empty on input. Guest state has not been changed. Otherwise,
  • Error: processing the first node of vcpus failed for the reason returned. Guest state has not been changed. Otherwise,
  • < length(vcpus): more than zero initial nodes have been processed, but not the entire vcpus list. Guest state has changed accordingly. To retrieve the error (assuming it persists), repeat the call with the successfully processed initial sublist removed. Otherwise,
  • length(vcpus): call successful.

1.5

An enumeration of bus type of disks

ide
IDE disks
fdc
floppy disks
scsi
SCSI disks
virtio
virtio disks
xen
Xen disks
usb
USB disks
uml
UML disks
sata
SATA disks
sd
SD cards
unknown
Unknown bus type
ieee1394
Win IEEE 1394 bus type
ssa
Win SSA bus type
fibre
Win fiber channel bus type
raid
Win RAID bus type
iscsi
Win iScsi bus type
sas
Win serial-attaches SCSI bus type
mmc
Win multimedia card (MMC) bus type
virtual
Win virtual bus type
file-backed-virtual
Win file-backed bus type

2.2; 'Unknown' and all entries below since 2.4

domain: int
domain id
bus: int
bus id
slot: int
slot id
function: int
function id

2.2

pci-controller: GuestPCIAddress
controller's PCI address (fields are set to -1 if invalid)
bus-type: GuestDiskBusType
bus type
bus: int
bus id
target: int
target id
unit: int
unit id
serial: string (optional)
serial number (since: 3.1)
dev: string (optional)
device node (POSIX) or device UNC (Windows) (since: 3.1)

2.2

name: string
device node (Linux) or device UNC (Windows)
partition: boolean
whether this is a partition or disk
dependencies: array of string (optional)
list of device dependencies; e.g. for LVs of the LVM this will hold the list of PVs, for LUKS encrypted volume this will contain the disk where the volume is placed. (Linux)
address: GuestDiskAddress (optional)
disk address information (only for non-virtual devices)
alias: string (optional)
optional alias assigned to the disk, on Linux this is a name assigned by device mapper

Since 5.2

The list of disks in the guest. For Windows these are only the physical disks. On Linux these are all root block devices of non-zero size including e.g. removable devices, loop devices, NBD, etc.

5.2

name: string
disk name
mountpoint: string
mount point path
type: string
file system type string
used-bytes: int (optional)
file system used bytes (since 3.0)
total-bytes: int (optional)
non-root file system total bytes (since 3.0)
disk: array of GuestDiskAddress
an array of disk hardware information that the volume lies on, which may be empty if the disk type is not supported

2.2

The list of filesystems information mounted in the guest. The returned mountpoints may be specified to guest-fsfreeze-freeze-list. Network filesystems (such as CIFS and NFS) are not listed.

2.2

username: string
the user account whose password to change
password: string
the new password entry string, base64 encoded
crypted: boolean
true if password is already crypt()d, false if raw

If the crypted flag is true, it is the caller's responsibility to ensure the correct crypt() encryption scheme is used. This command does not attempt to interpret or report on the encryption scheme. Refer to the documentation of the guest operating system in question to determine what is supported.

Not all guest operating systems will support use of the crypted flag, as they may require the clear-text password

The password parameter must always be base64 encoded before transmission, even if already crypt()d, to ensure it is 8-bit safe when passed as JSON.

Nothing on success.

2.3

phys-index: int
Arbitrary guest-specific unique identifier of the MEMORY BLOCK.
online: boolean
Whether the MEMORY BLOCK is enabled in guest.
can-offline: boolean (optional)
Whether offlining the MEMORY BLOCK is possible. This member is always filled in by the guest agent when the structure is returned, and always ignored on input (hence it can be omitted then).

2.3

Retrieve the list of the guest's memory blocks.

This is a read-only operation.

The list of all memory blocks the guest knows about. Each memory block is put on the list exactly once, but their order is unspecified.

2.3

An enumeration of memory block operation result.

success
the operation of online/offline memory block is successful.
not-found
can't find the corresponding memoryXXX directory in sysfs.
operation-not-supported
for some old kernels, it does not support online or offline memory block.
operation-failed
the operation of online/offline memory block fails, because of some errors happen.

2.3

phys-index: int
same with the 'phys-index' member of GuestMemoryBlock.
response: GuestMemoryBlockResponseType
the result of memory block operation.
error-code: int (optional)
the error number. When memory block operation fails, we assign the value of 'errno' to this member, it indicates what goes wrong. When the operation succeeds, it will be omitted.

2.3

Attempt to reconfigure (currently: enable/disable) state of memory blocks inside the guest.

The input list is processed node by node in order. In each node phys-index is used to look up the guest MEMORY BLOCK, for which online specifies the requested state. The set of distinct phys-index's is only required to be a subset of the guest-supported identifiers. There's no restriction on list length or on repeating the same phys-index (with possibly different online field). Preferably the input list should describe a modified subset of guest-get-memory-blocks' return value.

mem-blks: array of GuestMemoryBlock
Not documented

The operation results, it is a list of GuestMemoryBlockResponse, which is corresponding to the input list.

Note: it will return NULL if the mem-blks list was empty on input, or there is an error, and in this case, guest state will not be changed.

2.3

size: int
the size (in bytes) of the guest memory blocks, which are the minimal units of memory block online/offline operations (also called Logical Memory Hotplug).

2.3

Get information relating to guest memory blocks.

GuestMemoryBlockInfo

2.3

exited: boolean
true if process has already terminated.
exitcode: int (optional)
process exit code if it was normally terminated.
signal: int (optional)
signal number (linux) or unhandled exception code (windows) if the process was abnormally terminated.
out-data: string (optional)
base64-encoded stdout of the process
err-data: string (optional)
base64-encoded stderr of the process Note: out-data and err-data are present only if 'capture-output' was specified for 'guest-exec'
out-truncated: boolean (optional)
true if stdout was not fully captured due to size limitation.
err-truncated: boolean (optional)
true if stderr was not fully captured due to size limitation.

2.5

Check status of process associated with PID retrieved via guest-exec. Reap the process and associated metadata if it has exited.

pid: int
pid returned from guest-exec

GuestExecStatus on success.

2.5

pid: int
pid of child process in guest OS

2.5

Execute a command in the guest

path: string
path or executable name to execute
arg: array of string (optional)
argument list to pass to executable
env: array of string (optional)
environment variables to pass to executable
input-data: string (optional)
data to be passed to process stdin (base64 encoded)
capture-output: boolean (optional)
bool flag to enable capture of stdout/stderr of running process. defaults to false.

PID on success.

2.5

host-name: string
Fully qualified domain name of the guest OS

2.10

Return a name for the machine.

The returned name is not necessarily a fully-qualified domain name, or even present in DNS or some other name service at all. It need not even be unique on your local network or site, but usually it is.

the host name of the machine on success

2.10

user: string
Username
domain: string (optional)
Logon domain (windows only)
login-time: number
Time of login of this user on the computer. If multiple instances of the user are logged in, the earliest login time is reported. The value is in fractional seconds since epoch time.

2.10

Retrieves a list of currently active users on the VM.

A unique list of users.

2.10

zone: string (optional)
Timezone name. These values may differ depending on guest/OS and should only be used for informational purposes.
offset: int
Offset to UTC in seconds, negative numbers for time zones west of GMT, positive numbers for east

2.10

Retrieves the timezone information from the guest.

A GuestTimezone dictionary.

2.10

kernel-release: string (optional)
  • POSIX: release field returned by uname(2)
  • Windows: build number of the OS

kernel-version: string (optional)
  • POSIX: version field returned by uname(2)
  • Windows: version number of the OS

machine: string (optional)
  • POSIX: machine field returned by uname(2)
  • Windows: one of x86, x86_64, arm, ia64

id: string (optional)
  • POSIX: as defined by os-release(5)
  • Windows: contains string "mswindows"

name: string (optional)
  • POSIX: as defined by os-release(5)
  • Windows: contains string "Microsoft Windows"

pretty-name: string (optional)
  • POSIX: as defined by os-release(5)
  • Windows: product name, e.g. "Microsoft Windows 10 Enterprise"

version: string (optional)
  • POSIX: as defined by os-release(5)
  • Windows: long version string, e.g. "Microsoft Windows Server 2008"

version-id: string (optional)
  • POSIX: as defined by os-release(5)
  • Windows: short version identifier, e.g. "7" or "20012r2"

variant: string (optional)
  • POSIX: as defined by os-release(5)
  • Windows: contains string "server" or "client"

variant-id: string (optional)
  • POSIX: as defined by os-release(5)
  • Windows: contains string "server" or "client"


On POSIX systems the fields id, name, pretty-name, version, version-id, variant and variant-id follow the definition specified in os-release(5). Refer to the manual page for exact description of the fields. Their values are taken from the os-release file. If the file is not present in the system, or the values are not present in the file, the fields are not included.

On Windows the values are filled from information gathered from the system.

2.10

Retrieve guest operating system information

GuestOSInfo

2.10

pci
Not documented

vendor-id: int
vendor ID
device-id: int
device ID

5.2

Id of the device - pci: PCI ID, since: 5.2

type: GuestDeviceType
Not documented
The members of GuestDeviceIdPCI when type is "pci"

5.2

driver-name: string
name of the associated driver
driver-date: int (optional)
driver release date, in nanoseconds since the epoch
driver-version: string (optional)
driver version
id: GuestDeviceId (optional)
device ID

5.2

Retrieve information about device drivers in Windows guest

GuestDeviceInfo

5.2

keys: array of string
public keys (in OpenSSH/sshd(8) authorized_keys format)

5.2

defined(CONFIG_POSIX).SS guest-ssh-get-authorized-keys (Command)

username: string
the user account to add the authorized keys

Return the public keys from user .ssh/authorized_keys on Unix systems (not implemented for other systems).

GuestAuthorizedKeys

5.2

defined(CONFIG_POSIX).SS guest-ssh-add-authorized-keys (Command)

username: string
the user account to add the authorized keys
keys: array of string
the public keys to add (in OpenSSH/sshd(8) authorized_keys format)
reset: boolean (optional)
ignore the existing content, set it with the given keys only

Append public keys to user .ssh/authorized_keys on Unix systems (not implemented for other systems).

Nothing on success.

5.2

defined(CONFIG_POSIX).SS guest-ssh-remove-authorized-keys (Command)

username: string
the user account to remove the authorized keys
keys: array of string
the public keys to remove (in OpenSSH/sshd(8) authorized_keys format)

Remove public keys from the user .ssh/authorized_keys on Unix systems (not implemented for other systems). It's not an error if the key is already missing.

Nothing on success.

5.2

defined(CONFIG_POSIX).SH COPYRIGHT 2020, The QEMU Project Developers
June 8, 2022 5.2.0
Search for    or go to Top of page |  Section 7 |  Main Index

Powered by GSP Visit the GSP FreeBSD Man Page Interface.
Output converted with ManDoc.