Here is a quick procedure to install Nutanix Guest Tools manually on your Linux virtual machines (Rocky Linux, RHEL, CentOS…) using the command line.

What are Nutanix Guest Tools?

NGT is a set of software features installed on a virtual machine (VM) and a Nutanix CVM. A Nutanix Guest Agent publishes information about the virtual machine to the Nutanix cluster, such as the guest operating system type, the virtual machine’s mobility status, and the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). The Nutanix Guest Agent is installed on both Windows and Linux guest virtual machines.

Installing Nutanix Guest Tools

Connect to your Nutanix cluster on Prism Central, go to the list of virtual machines, right-click on the virtual machine on which you want to install NGTs, and click “Install NGT”:

On the next screen, in my case no need to change anything, click on “Confirm and Enter Password”:

Don’t touch anything on this screen, just click “Skip and Mount” at the bottom left:

The ISO is mounted, now we move on to the command lines!

Installing Nutanix Guest Tools (e.g., Rocky Linux)

Here are the commands to run on the virtual machine to install Nutanix Guest Tools:

• System Update:

sudo dnf update && sudo dnf upgrade

• Installing Python (if not present on the machine):

sudo dnf install python3

• Verifying the reader ID:

blkid -L NUTANIX_TOOLS

• Command print:

/dev/sr0

• Mounting ISO:

sudo mount /dev/sr0 /mnt

• NGT Installation:

systemd-run --unit=ngt_guest_agent_upgrade --slice=upgrade_ngt sh /mnt/installer/linux/ngt_rpm_installer/ngt_install_upgrade.sh

• Checking the installation from the command line:

[root@XXXXXXXXXX administrateur]# yum list installed | grep 'nutanix-guest-agent'
nutanix-guest-agent.x86_64 4.1.2-1 @nutanix-ngt-20250423153748

• Checking the installation on Prism Central:

• Unmounting ISO:

umount /dev/sr0

That’s it ! Nutanix Guest Tools are installed !