[CentOS-virt] xendomains not autostarting

Mon Nov 30 20:02:14 UTC 2009
Ben M. <centos at rivint.com>

I apologize about that list etiquette breach. Was completely unaware a 
thread string was attached somewhere. Never knew that. I will observe 
that courtesy.

I will go through yours and Christopher's points after I get some needed 
other work done. After that, I may just backup the domUs I developed and 
do a new install. I must have hosed something.

Eric Searcy wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 11:18 AM, Ben M. <centos at rivint.com> wrote:
>> Thanks, you gave me some solid points to check that I hadn't fully and I
>> think I know a little more.
>>
>> My chkconfig run level 2 was on, but runlevel was at "N 3". I toggled
>> off, rebooted, no difference. Toggled on and off for the rest of the
>> checklist.
> 
> (p.s. on next most recent post: it's not about the "list", it's that
> your email client contains a reference to the thread which other mail
> clients use to present the thread in some manner--a tree or such.
> "All other lists you have been on" would have acted the same way, you
> just may not have realized as we all have different email clients.)
> 
> I didn't go into detail about what I was trying to point out about the
> runlevels, which I think may have led you astray a bit.  Being in
> runlevel 3 means it wouldn't matter whether xendomains is set to start
> when in 2.  I only brought it up because by default xendomains doesn't
> start in 2, so *if* you were starting in 2 it wouldn't start then.  As
> you're apparently running in 3 (the default), "toggling" the setting
> for 2 was a bit of a red herring.
> 
>> Everything checked out except for XENDOMAINS_RESTORE=true
>> which is default. I set it to false, toggled the runlevel 2 for a couple
>> of reboot checks. No joy, but ...
>>
>> Oddly I am getting Saves, even though DESTROY is explicitly set in the
>> vm's conf to all circumstances:
> 
> "destroy" in this context is your setting for what happens when the
> domain stops *on its own accord*.  You still get saves if you shut
> down the dom0 and the xendomains script goes around and saves all the
> running domains (assuming it is configured to do that).
> 
>> name = 'v22c54'
>> uuid = 'a3199faf-edb4-42e5-bea1-01f2df77a47f'
>> maxmem = 512
>> memory = 512
>> vcpus = 1
>> bootloader = '/usr/bin/pygrub'
>> on_poweroff = 'destroy'
>> on_reboot = 'destroy'
>> on_crash = 'destroy'
>> vfb = [ 'type=vnc,vncunused=1,keymap=en-us' ]
>> # note selinux is off now, but the privileges are set correctly
>> disk = [ 'tap:aio:/var/lib/xen/images/vms/v22c54,xvda,w' ]
>> vif = [ 'mac=00:16:36:41:76:ae,bridge=xenbr1' ]
>>
>> I then slapped it around a bit and another quirk appeared.
>>
>>  From a fresh boot, I then manually started xendomains service. v22c54
>> comes up. I did an xm shut and it reported it shut, nothing in the Save
>> folder. However, check this out:
>>
>> [root at river22 ~]# service xendomains start
>> Starting auto Xen domains: v22c54[done]                    [  OK  ]
>> [root at river22 ~]# xm list
>> Name                             ID Mem(MiB) VCPUs State   Time(s)
>> Domain-0                          0     1024     2 r-----     24.7
>> v22c54                            1      511     1 r-----      9.0
>>
>> [root at river22 ~]# xm shutdown v22c54
>> (no echo)
>>
>> (I then tried to bring it back up, it balks, its not there and I see a
>> boot_kernel.random and a boot_ramdisk.random come up in /var/lib/xen)
>>
>> [root at river22 ~]# xm create v22c54
>> Using config file "/etc/xen/v22c54".
>> Error: VM name 'v22c54' already in use by domain 1
>>
>> (it isn't there)
>> [root at river22 ~]# xm list
>> Name                             ID Mem(MiB) VCPUs State   Time(s)
>> Domain-0                          0     1024     2 r-----     29.7
>> [root at river22 ~]# xm shutdown v22c54
>> Error: Domain 'v22c54' does not exist.
>> Usage: xm shutdown <Domain> [-waRH]
>>
>> Shutdown a domain.
>> [root at river22 ~]# xm list
>> Name                                      ID Mem(MiB) VCPUs State   Time(s)
>> Domain-0                                   0     1024     2 r-----     29.9
>>
>> I certainly like to know why things glitch and don't mind seeing this
>> through a little further, but I am beginning to wonder if I should just
>> backup the domU's and try a fresh installation.
>>
>> Is it possible I am running into a naming convention on these domUs?
>>
>> My first 3 chars help me determine on which host the virtual machine was
>> originally created.
> 
> Likely just a timing issue if that was the order you ran the commands
> in.  xm shutdown tells the guest to shutdown, it doesn't instantly
> destroy it.  This can take awhile dependent on what your guest needs
> to do.  If xm create told you it was still in use, it probably was
> still shutting down.  It then probably finished shutting down and was
> gone when you ran xm list.  The only thing that would be alarming is
> if you ran xm list *first* and didn't see the domain and then ran xm
> create and it told you it was in use.
> 
> Typically if I need to hard-cycle the host (config file changes) I
> shut down a guest from the guest OS, watch xm list until it goes away,
> and then run xm create.
> 
> The other thing I meant to suggest in my first email would be
> modifying (make a backup first) the xendomains start() function to
> append `date` to some random file in /tmp or similar.  That would help
> target whether the error is that the xendomains script isn't running
> (OS configuration issue) or that it is running but not starting the
> domain (something more to do with xen configuration).
> 
> Anyways, these are just some general "what steps would I take to
> investigate this error"; I disclaim any warranty from whether these
> might lead you on a wild goose chase if you run too far with them ;-)
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