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 Manual: qm and Qm manual

OpenVZ specific

vzctl

vzctl - utility to control an OpenVZ container - see Vzctl manual

vztop

vztop - display top CPU processes

user_beancounters

cat /proc/user_beancounters

vzlist

example:

vzlist
      CTID      NPROC STATUS    IP_ADDR         HOSTNAME
       101         26 running   -               localhost.fantinibakery.com
       102        121 running   10.100.100.18   mediawiki.fantinibakery.com
       114         49 running   -               fbc14.fantinibakery.com

From PVE 3.0 onwards, the display will be:

vzlist
      CTID      NPROC STATUS    IP_ADDR         HOSTNAME
       101         26 running   -               localhost
       102        121 running   10.100.100.18   mediawiki
       114         49 running   -               fbc14

• The fields for selective display are: ctid, nproc, status, ip, hostname.
• All are case sensitive and are used with the options -H (no header) and -o [field1, field2, ...]
• The binary is at: /usr/sbin/vzlist
• Usage

Usage: vzlist [-a | -S] [-n] [-H] [-o field[,field...] | -1] [-s [-]field]
        [-h pattern] [-N pattern] [-d pattern] [CTID [CTID ...]]
 vzlist -L | --list

Options:
 -a, --all  list all containers
 -S, --stopped  list stopped containers
 -n, --name   display containers' names
 -H, --no-header   suppress columns header
 -t, --no-trim  do not trim long values
 -j, --json   output in JSON format
 -o, --output  output only specified fields
 -1    synonym for -H -octid
 -s, --sort   sort by the specified field
    ('-field' to reverse sort order)
 -h, --hostname   filter CTs by hostname pattern
 -N, --name_filter filter CTs by name pattern
 -d, --description filter CTs by description pattern
 -L, --list   get possible field names

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 - see Qmrestore manual

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

LVM

Most of the commands in LVM are very similar to each other. Each valid command is preceded by one of the following:

• Physical Volume = pv
• Volume Group = vg
• Logical Volume = lv

USAGE

		Physicl Volume	Volume Group	Logical Volume
	LVM	PV	VG	LV
s	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
display	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
create	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
rename	No	No	Yes	Yes
change	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
move	No	Yes	Yes	No
extend	No	No	Yes	Yes
reduce	No	No	Yes	Yes
resize	No	Yes	No	Yes
split	No	No	Yes	No
merge	No	No	Yes	No
convert	No	No	Yes	Yes
import	No	No	Yes	No
export	No	No	Yes	No
importclone	No	No	Yes	No
cfgbackup	No	No	Yes	No
cfgrestore	No	No	Yes	No
ck	No	Yes	Yes	No
scan	diskscan	Yes	Yes	Yes
mknodes	No	No	Yes	No
remove	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
dump	Yes	No	No	No

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.>>