Troubleshooting
If you experience technical difficulties with the XenServer host, this section is meant to help you solve the problem if possible. If it isn’t possible, use the information in this section to gather the application logs and other data that can help Technical Support track and resolve the issue.
The following articles provide troubleshooting information about specific areas of the product:
- VM troubleshooting
- Networking troubleshooting
- Clustered pool troubleshooting
- XenCenter troubleshooting
- Workload Balancing troubleshooting
- Conversion Manager troubleshooting
Troubleshoot connections between XenCenter and the XenServer host
If you have trouble connecting to the XenServer host with XenCenter, check the following:
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Is your XenCenter an older version than the XenServer host that you are attempting to connect to?
XenCenter 8.2.7 and earlier are not supported with XenServer 8 hosts. To manage your XenServer 8 hosts or pools, you require the latest version of XenCenter with a version of the form YYYY.x.x.
To correct this issue, install the latest version of XenCenter.
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Is your license current?
You can see the expiration date for your license access code in the XenServer host General tab under the License Details section in XenCenter.
For more information on licensing a host, see Licensing.
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The XenServer host talks to XenCenter using HTTPS over the following ports:
- Port 443 (a two-way connection for commands and responses using the management API)
- Port 5900 for graphical VNC connections with paravirtualized Linux VMs.
If you have a firewall enabled between the XenServer host and the machine running the client software, ensure that it allows traffic from these ports. For more information, see Internet connectivity.
Gather logs
XenServer server status reports
XenCenter can be used to gather XenServer host information.
Important:
XenServer server status reports can contain sensitive information. For more information, see Data governance.
Click Server Status Report in the Tools menu to open the Server Status Report task. You can select from a list of different types of information (various logs, crash dumps, and so on). The information is compiled and downloaded to the machine that XenCenter is running on. For more information, see the XenCenter documentation.
By default, the files gathered for a server status report can be limited in size. If you need log files that are larger than the default, you can run the command xenserver-status-report -u in the XenServer host console.
Send syslog messages to a central server
Rather than have logs written to the control domain filesystem, you can configure your XenServer host to write them to a remote server. The remote server must have the syslogd daemon running on it to receive the logs and aggregate them correctly. The syslogd daemon is a standard part of all flavors of Linux and Unix, and third-party versions are available for Windows and other operating systems.
Set the syslog_destination parameter to the host name or IP address of the remote server where you want the logs to be written:
xe host-param-set uuid=host_uuid logging:syslog_destination=hostname
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Run the command:
xe host-syslog-reconfigure host-uuid=host_uuid
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To enforce the change. (You can also run this command remotely by specifying the host parameter.)
XenCenter logs
XenCenter also has a client-side log. This file includes a complete description of all operations and errors that occur when using XenCenter. It also contains informational logging of events that provide you with an audit trail of various actions that have occurred. The XenCenter log file is stored in your profile folder at the following path: %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\XenServer\XenCenter\logs\XenCenter.log.
To locate the XenCenter log files - for example, when you want to open or email the log file - click View XenCenter Log Files in the XenCenter Help menu.
Installation logs
If you experience an unknown error during installation, capture the log file from your host and provide it to Technical Support.
Using a keyboard connected directly to the host machine (not connected over a serial port), you can access three virtual terminals during installation:
- Press Alt+F1 to access the main XenServer Installer
- Press Alt+F2 to access a local shell
- Press Alt+F3 to access the event log
To capture and save the log files:
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Press Alt+F2 to access the local shell.
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Enter the following:
/opt/xensource/installer/report.py <!--NeedCopy--> -
You are prompted to choose where you want to save the log file: NFS, FTP, or Local media.
Select NFS or FTP to copy the log file to another machine on your network. To do so, networking must be working properly, and you must have write access to a remote machine.
Select Local media to save the file to a removable storage device, such as a USB flash drive, on the local machine.
Once you have made your selections, the program writes the log file to your chosen location. The file name is
support.tar.bz2.