Debian: How to Install ovirt-guest-agent on Debian 9

The ovirt-guest-agent package is currently broken on Debian 9, and possibly older versions. The package will install successfully but then fail to start until a few extra steps are taken. I have not confirmed if this will work for Debian 8 and earlier.

If you start the tools, and then get a systemctl status like this:

Then try the following steps:

Make a new file in /etc/udev/rules.d called 55-ovirt-guest-agent.rules and put the following in it:

SYMLINK=="virtio-ports/ovirt-guest-agent.0", OWNER="ovirtagent", GROUP="ovirtagent"

That’s ovirt-guest-agent.ZERO not the letter O, in case the font makes it hard to tell. After making that file, run the following to get udev to acknowledge it:

sudo udevadm trigger --subsystem-match="virtio-ports"

Finally, there’s a part of /etc/ovirt-guest-agent.conf that needs to be edited. Under the block titled [virtio], there should be a commented out line. Right beneath that line we need to tell oVirt about a file. The end result should look like this:

[virtio]
# device = /dev/virtio-ports/com.redhat.rhevm.vdsm
device = /dev/virtio-ports/ovirt-guest-agent.0

Again, that last character is a zero, not the letter O.

After making that change, the service should start successfully. Once rebooted, you should notice better VM performance, and more information in the oVirt management page.