Tag Archives: Xen Server

XenServer VMs and easy autostart

One of the most tedious tasks I find myself doing on XS installation is switching VMs’ autostart off and on. While no big deal it got boring real fast. I thus crafted a couple bash scripts to be run on the XS host that speed the task up.

#!/bin/bash
pool=$(xe pool-list | sed -n "s/.*\uuid.*: \(.*\)/\1/p" | awk '{ system("xe pool-param-get param-name=other-config param-key=auto_poweron uuid="$0" 2>&1") }' | sed 's/Error: Key auto_poweron not found in map/false/g' | sed 's/false/INACTIVE/g' | sed 's/true/ACTIVE/g')
list=$(xe vm-list | sed -n "s/.*\(uuid\|name-label\).*)[ ]*: \(.*\)/\2/p" | awk '{ print $0; } NR%2==1 { system("xe vm-param-get param-name=other-config param-key=auto_poweron uuid="$0" 2>&1" ) }' | sed 's/Error: Key auto_poweron not found in map/false/g' | awk '{id=$0; getline; atrun=$0; getline; print atrun " " $0 " [" id "]"; }' | sort -k 2 | grep -v "Transfer VM for VDI" | grep -v "Control domain on host" )
active=$(echo "$list" | sed -n "s/true \(.*\)/\1/p")
inactive=$(echo "$list" | sed -n "s/false \(.*\)/\1/p")
echo -e "\nAuto restart in the pool is $pool\n\n"
if [ "$active" != "" ]; then
  echo -e "*** VIRTUAL MACHINES AUTO RESTARTING ***************\n\n$active\n\n"
fi
if [ "$inactive" != "" ]; then
  echo -e "*** VIRTUAL MACHINES _NOT_ AUTO RESTARTING *********\n\n$inactive\n\n"
fi

This script will parse all the VMs while skipping a few system instances, and will clearly show which ones are starting automatically, together with the corresponding UUID, so no guesswork or matching is needed.

# ./autostart_status.sh

Auto restart in the pool is ACTIVE


*** VIRTUAL MACHINES AUTO RESTARTING ***************

VM1 [UUID1]


*** VIRTUAL MACHINES _NOT_ AUTO RESTARTING *********

VM2 [UUID2]
VM3 [UUID3]

With our UUID in hand, we can now enable/disable it through this tiny script:

#!/bin/bash
if [ "$2" == "true" -o "$2" == "false" ]; then
        xe vm-param-set other-config:auto_poweron=$2 uuid=$1
else
        echo Correct syntax: $0 \ \
fi

With these two scripts the task becomes checking the VM name and switching it on/off in a matter of seconds. Mission complete.