Command line tools - PVE 3.x

Introduction

This page lists the important Proxmox VE and Debian command line tools. All CLI tools have also manual pages.

KVM specific

qm

qm - qemu/kvm manager - see qm manual

OpenVZ specific

vzctl

vzctl - utility to control an OpenVZ container.

vztop

vztop - display top CPU processes

user_beancounters

cat /proc/user_beancounters

Backup

vzdump

vzdump - backup utility for virtual machine - see Vzdump manual

vzrestore

vzrestore - restore OpenVZ vzdump backups - see vzrestore manual

qmrestore

qmrestore - restore KVM vzdump backups

USAGE

qmrestore [OPTIONS] <archive> <VMID>

--info #read/verify archive and print relevant information (test run)

--storage <STORAGE_ID> #restore to storage <STORAGE_ID>

--prealloc #never generate sparse files

DESCRIPTION

Restore the QemuServer vzdump backup <archive> to virtual machine <VMID>. Volumes are allocated on the original storage if there is no "--storage" specified.

Cluster management

pveca

PVE Cluster Administration Toolkit

USAGE

• pveca -l # show cluster status
• pveca -c # create new cluster with localhost as master
• pveca -s [-h IP] # sync cluster configuration from master (or IP)
• pveca -d ID # delete a node
• pveca -a [-h IP] # add new node to cluster
• pveca -m # force local node to become master
• pveca -i # print node info (CID NAME IP ROLE)

Software version check

pveversion

Proxmox VE version info - Print version information for Proxmox VE packages.

USAGE

pveversion [--verbose]

• without any argument shows the version of pve-manager, something like:

pve-manager/1.5/4660

• with -v argument it shows a list of programs versions related to pve, like:

pve-manager: 1.5-7 (pve-manager/1.5/4660)

running kernel: 2.6.18-2-pve

proxmox-ve-2.6.18: 1.5-5

pve-kernel-2.6.18-2-pve: 2.6.18-5

pve-kernel-2.6.18-1-pve: 2.6.18-4

qemu-server: 1.1-11

pve-firmware: 1.0-3

libpve-storage-perl: 1.0-10

vncterm: 0.9-2

vzctl: 3.0.23-1pve8

vzdump: 1.2-5

vzprocps: 2.0.11-1dso2

vzquota: 3.0.11-1

pve-qemu-kvm-2.6.18: 0.9.1-5

aptitude

Standard Debian package update tool

DRBD

See DRBD

Debian Appliance Builder

dab

See Debian_Appliance_Builder

Other useful tools

pveperf

Simple host performance test.

(from man page)

USAGE

pveperf [PATH]

DESCRIPTION

Tries to gather some CPU/Hardisk performance data on the hardisk mounted at PATH (/ is used as default)

It dumps on the terminal:

• CPU BOGOMIPS: bogomips sum of all CPUs
• REGEX/SECOND: regular expressions per second (perl performance test), should be above 300000
• HD SIZE: harddisk size
• BUFFERED READS: simple HD read test. Modern HDs should reach at least 40 MB/sec
• AVERAGE SEEK TIME: tests average seek time. Fast SCSI HDs reach values < 8 milliseconds. Common IDE/SATA disks get values from 15 to 20 ms.
• FSYNCS/SECOND: value should be greater than 200 (you should enable "write back" cache mode on you RAID controller - needs a battery backed cache (BBWC)).
• DNS EXT: average time to resolve an external DNS name
• DNS INT: average time to resolve a local DNS name

Note: this command may require root privileges (or sudo) to run, otherwise you get an error after "HD SIZE" value, like: <<sh: /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches: Permission denied unable to open HD at /usr/bin/pveperf line 149.>>