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 8.4 hosts. To manage your XenServer 8.4 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.
Ping the XenServer host
If your XenServer host is not responsive to XenCenter, it might still be running but management functionality has failed. To check whether this is the case, complete the following steps:
- Note the IP address or host name of the XenServer host.
- Open a command line or terminal on a system that has network access to your host.
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Run the following command:
ping <ip_address_or_host_name>- If the command receives a response and SSH access is enabled on your host, you can SSH into your host and use the command line to gather diagnostic logs. For more information, see XenServer server status reports.
- If the command does not receive a response, you might need to access the host through the serial console to gather diagnostic logs. For more information, see Configure serial console access.
Gather logs
XenServer server status reports
Important:
XenServer server status reports can contain sensitive information. For more information, see Data governance.
XenCenter can be used to gather XenServer host information:
- In XenCenter, open the Tools menu and click Server Status Report. The Server Status Report task opens.
- Select the servers to gather information from. Click Next.
- Select from a list of different types of information (various logs, crash dumps, and so on) to include. Click Next.
- Specify the file name and the location on the system running XenCenter to save the information to. Click Next.
- Wait while the information is compiled and downloaded to the machine that XenCenter is running on.
- Click Finish to exit the wizard.
You can also gather the server status report for a host by using the command line. If you cannot connect to your XenServer host by using XenCenter but can connect to it by SSH, you can use the server status report command line tool to gather the logs for that host.
To gather the log files, run the following command in the XenServer host console:
xenserver-status-report
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 following command in the XenServer host console:
xenserver-status-report -u
After gathering the log files on your XenServer host, use a secure copy program, such as pscp or WinSCP, to copy the log files to your local system.
If your XenServer host is not booting successfully, you can still attempt to gather logs. For more information, see Gather logs when XenServer is failing to boot.
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
Run the command:
xe host-syslog-reconfigure host-uuid=host_uuid
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 -
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.