1. Download newest version of nova-agent from the github repo to the server you want to upgrade : https://github.com/rackerlabs/openstack-guest-agents-unix/releases

For this instance I used “nova-agent-1.39-1.x86_64.rpm” since it’s CentOS / Redhat based

2. Stop current nova-agent service

service nova-agent stop

3. Remove current in place nova-agent. I found the easiest way to do this is to just remove the entire contents of it’s directory.

rm -rf /usr/share/nova-agent/*

4. Install the new nova-agent with the RPM

rpm -ivh --nosignature nova-agent-1.39-1.x86_64.rpm

5. Start the new nova-agent service

service nova-agent start (might need to use systemd for CentOS/RHEL 7 and above)
# ie 
systemctl enable nova-agent
systemctl start nova-agent

6. Issue a networking reset to verify it is working. Check logs and verify that you see this message : ‘resetnetwork’ completed with code ‘0’, message ”

uuid=$(uuidgen)
xenstore-write data/host/$uuid '{"name":"resetnetwork","value":""}'

tail -20 /var/log/nova-agent.log

That’s it! Once you’ve done that you should reboot to verify that the nova-agent comes up on boot but otherwise nothing else is needed. Hope it helps!

Thanks to Sean from Rackspace for this.. you rock dudery.