Linux in a Nutshell, 6th Edition

Name

xm

Synopsis

xm [options] command

Xen hypervisor management interface. Generally you will use virsh to control VMs, but there are a few useful functions you can get from xm but not virsh. We cover the most common commands here.

xm can be used to configure virtual machine access rights and security policies. Policies are given labels and the labels applied to domains. This is an advanced topic we do not cover in this book.

Commands

console domain

Connect to serial console on domain, if available. Use ctrl-] to exit a console.

create [-c] configfile [settings]

Start the guest domain described in configfile. This command is generally used to start a previously installed domain that is not currently running. By default, a domain will have a configuration file of the same name in /etc/xen/. You can specify the configfile with a full path, or a path relative to /etc/xen/. The configuration file, a Python executable file, largely consists of name=value pairs. These can also be given in a space--separated list on the command line. The manpage for xmdomain.cfg contains details on configuration file format and valid entries. The -c option causes xm to connect to the console as soon as the machine starts.

destroy domain

Immediately kill any running instance of the domain and free its resources to the hypervisor. (You usually want to use shutdown instead.)

dmesg [-c]

Print the Xen message buffer. This buffer contains informational, warning, and error messages. The -c option clears the message buffer. ...