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 - see qmrestore manual
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
LVM
iSCSI
DRBD
See DRBD
Debian Appliance Builder
dab
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.>>