QEMU-PR-HELPER(8)

NAME
qemu-pr-helper - QEMU persistent reservation helper

SYNOPSIS

qemu-pr-helper [OPTION]

DESCRIPTION

Implements the persistent reservation helper for QEMU.

SCSI persistent reservations allow restricting access to block devices to specific initiators in a shared storage setup. When implementing clustering of virtual machines, it is a common requirement for virtual machines to send persistent reservation SCSI commands. However, the operating system restricts sending these commands to unprivileged programs because incorrect usage can disrupt regular operation of the storage fabric. QEMU's SCSI passthrough devices scsi-block and scsi-generic support passing guest persistent reservation requests to a privileged external helper program. qemu-pr-helper is that external helper; it creates a listener socket which will accept incoming connections for communication with QEMU.

If you want to run VMs in a setup like this, this helper should be started as a system service, and you should read the QEMU manual section on "persistent reservation managers" to find out how to configure QEMU to connect to the socket created by qemu-pr-helper.

After connecting to the socket, qemu-pr-helper can optionally drop root privileges, except for those capabilities that are needed for its operation.

qemu-pr-helper can also use the systemd socket activation protocol. In this case, the systemd socket unit should specify a Unix stream socket, like this:

    [Socket]
    ListenStream=/var/run/qemu-pr-helper.sock

OPTIONS

-d, --daemon
    run in the background (and create a PID file)

-q, --quiet
    decrease verbosity

-v, --verbose
    increase verbosity

-f, --pidfile=PATH
    PID file when running as a daemon. By default the PID file is created in the system runtime state directory, for example /var/run/qemu-pr-helper.pid.

-k, --socket=PATH
    path to the socket. By default the socket is created in the system runtime state directory, for example /var/run/qemu-pr-helper.sock.

-T, --trace [[enable=]PATTERN][,events=FILE][,file=FILE]
    Specify tracing options.

    [enable=]PATTERN Immediately enable events matching PATTERN (either event name or a globbing pattern). This option is only available if QEMU has been compiled with the simple, log or ftrace tracing backend. To specify multiple events or patterns, specify the -trace option multiple times.

    Use -trace help to print a list of names of trace points.

    events=FILE Immediately enable events listed in FILE. The file must contain one event name (as listed in the trace-events-all file) per line; globbing patterns are accepted too. This option is only available if QEMU has been compiled with the simple, log or ftrace tracing backend.

    file=FILE Log output traces to FILE. This option is only available if QEMU has been compiled with the simple tracing backend.

-u, --user=USER
    user to drop privileges to

-g, --group=GROUP
    group to drop privileges to

-h, --help
    Display a help message and exit.

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

Copyright
2026, The QEMU Project Developers