Here are some useful Linux commands to use in a XenServer SSH session or at the XenServer console. Compiled by the guys at Citrix...
xe help --all|more Show a list of XenServer CLI commands
xsconsole Runs up the XenServer text based console
xe-toolstack-restart Restarts the XenServer management tools
ls –l List files in a Directory
less /var/log/dmesg Display Boot Messages from Linux
xe host-dmesg Xen Hypervisor Boot messages
tail –f /var/log/xensource.log Look at xapi messages as they happen
tail –f /var/log/xensource.log | grep xxx Look at xapi messages only for vm uuid xxx
tail –f [log name] > [target filename] Send output to a file for analysis later
cat /etc/xensource-inventory Display XenSource Inventory info
xen-bugtool --yes Build a status report when xapi is down
xe-backup-metadata -d –u [uuid of SR] Back up Pool metadata for all VMs
tcpdump –i [inf] –vvv –w [filename] Get a Packet trace from [inf]. E.g. Inf=eth0, xenbr0, vif2.0 etc.
top List the top processes running in Dom0
xentop List top Xen processes
mpstat 5 Processor stats in Dom0
vmstat 2 Virtual memory in Dom0
netstat –s Networking statistics
iostat -d 2 6 Storage traffic stats
list_domains Lists VMs that are running
fdisk –l List the disk partitions
hdparm –t /dev/sda3 Device read times for sda3 (normally local SR)
pvs Show local and remote LVHD SRs
ll /dev/disks/by-id Look at disk partitions
lvs List logical volumes (virtual disks)
vgs List LVM volume groups
cd /var/run/sr-mount Look at NFS SRs
df -h Shows how much disk space you have left
dd if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/null iflag=direct bs=1M count=512 Read data performance from sdb.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb oflag=direct bs=1M count=4096 Write performance on sdb. * Don’t use on disks with VMs on them!
ifconfig Show info on NICs, virtual switches and vNICs
brctl show Show info on virtual switches
ethtool eth0 Info for NIC eth0
mii-tool Info on NIC bonding
iscsiadm -m discovery --type sendtargets --port 192.168.250.14 Discover iSCSI targets available to this server
iscsiadm –m session Open iscsi sessions
history Lists the history of commands you’ve used
!136 Executes command #136 in the history
history -w history-list.txt Writes the history info to a text file