Re: [Xen-users] Xen 4.2.0 Release Plan / TODO

[Mark van Dijk <lists+xen@internecto.net>]

>> I realise I'm probably too late, but if it's trivial then maybe it is
>> possible to implement an 'xl reset vmname' function before the final
>> release.
>> 
>> Or is this not as trivial as I think it is?  

Ian Campbell wrote:
> What is it supposed to do?

Casey DeLorme wrote:
> Would reset be different than reboot?
> http://xenbits.xen.org/docs/unstable/man/xl.1.html

The already implemented 'xl reboot' sends an instruction to the running
VM. If that VM doesn't understand this type of call then xl tells you to
try issuing 'xl reboot -F', which sends an ACPI reboot instruction.

These are convenient commands to be issued to a running domain so they
can properly shutdown. But today I found that these both do nothing
when a domain is frozen, e.g. a windows bsod or a hard Linux crash.
It looks to me like there is just one way to take care of that:
(manually) destroy and recreate.

Back when I used xm I remember using the 'xm reset' command that just
simply emulates a manual press of the reset button. By coincidence,
today I found xl lacks this command. In effect I think all it does is
'xl destroy', wait until the domain is properly released and then 'xl
create' it again. This is a bit more convenient than manually issuing
both commands because the time it takes to destroy a VM varies.

So my request is just for convenience and this is why I called it
trivial. Also because one could still issue something like 'xl destroy
domain; sleep 30s; xl create domain'.

(In fact, in my zsh shell env I wrote an xl function that is a wrapper
to the xl binary. Another thing is that it allows me to do 'xl edit
VMname' which issues e.g. 'vim /etc/xen/hosts/VMname'. And when I issue
'xl create VMname' it actually executes '/usr/sbin/xl
create /etc/xen/hosts/VMname'. I like convenience; who doesn't? <grin>)

-- 
Stay in touch,
Mark van Dijk.               ,---------------------------------
----------------------------'         Tue Sep 04 08:23 UTC 2012
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