Category: Virtualization

vzlist Output Parameters and Their Specifiers

OpenVZ ‘vzlist’ command information

vzlist Output Parameters and Their Specifiers

Almost any parameter that can be used after the -o and -s switches of the vzlist utility can be specified by the “dot+letter” combination following the parameter and denoting one of the following things:

Specifier Description
.m The maximal registered usage of the corresponding resource by the given Container.
.b The barrier on using the corresponding resource set for the given Container.
.l The limit on using the corresponding resource set for the given Container.
.f The number of times the system has failed to allocate the corresponding resource for the given Container.
.s The soft limit on using the corresponding resource set for the given Container.
.h The hard limit on using the corresponding resource set for the given Container.

The following parameters are available for using with the utility:

Parameter Possible Specifiers Output Column Description
ctid none CTID The Container ID.
hostname none HOSTNAME The Container hostname.
ip none IP_ADDR The Container IP address.
status none STATUS Specifies whether the Container is running or stopped.
tm none TM Specifies the type of the OS template your Container is based on:

  • ST indicates that the Container is based on a standard OS template;
  • EZ indicates that the Container is based on an EZ OS template.
ostemplate none OSTEMPLATE Specifies the name of the OS template your Container is based on ( e.g. redhat-el5-x86).
kmemsize .m, .b,.l, .f KMEMSIZE The size of unswappable kernel memory (in bytes), allocated for internal kernel structures of the processes of a particular Container. Typical amounts of kernel memory are 16…50 Kb per process.
lockedpages .m, .b,.l, .f LOCKEDP The amount of memory not allowed to be swapped out (locked with the mlock() system call), in 4-Kb pages.
privvmpages .m, .b,.l, .f PRIVVMP The size in 4 Kb pages of private (or potentially private) memory, allocated by Container applications. Memory that is always shared among different applications is not included in this resource parameter.
shmpages .m, .b,.l, .f SHMP The total size of shared memory (including IPC, shared anonymous mappings and tmpfs objects), allocated by processes of a particular Container, in 4 Kb pages.
numproc .m, .b,.l, .f NPROC The number of processes and threads allowed.
physpages .m, .b,.l, .f PHYSP The total size of RAM used by processes. This is accounting-only parameter currently. It shows the usage of RAM by the Container. For memory pages used by several different Containers (mappings of shared libraries, for example), only a fraction of a page is charged to each Container. The sum of the physpages usage for all Containers corresponds to the total number of pages used in the system by all accounted users.
vmguarpages .m, .b,.l, .f VMGUARP The memory allocation guarantee, in pages (one page is 4 Kb). Applications are guaranteed to be able to allocate memory while the amount of memory accounted as privvmpages does not exceed the configured barrier of the vmguarpages parameter. Above the barrier, memory allocation may fail in case of overall memory shortage.
oomguarpages .m, .b,.l, .f OOMGUARP The out-of-memory guarantee, in 4 Kb pages. Any Container process will not be killed even in case of heavy memory shortage if the current memory consumption (including both physical memory and swap) does not reach the oomguarpages barrier.
numtcpsock .m, .b,.l, .f NTCPSOCK The number of TCP sockets (PF_INET family, SOCK_STREAM type). This parameter limits the number of TCP connections and, thus, the number of clients the server application can handle in parallel.
numflock .m, .b,.l, .f NFLOCK The number of file locks created by all Container processes.
numpty .m, .b,.l, .f NPTY The number of pseudo-terminals. For example, ssh session, screen, xterm application consumes pseudo-terminal resource.
numsiginfo .m, .b,.l, .f NSIGINFO The number of siginfo structures (essentially this parameter limits size of signal delivery queue).
tcpsndbuf .m, .b,.l, .f TCPSNDB The total size (in bytes) of send buffers for TCP sockets – amount of kernel memory allocated for data sent from an application to a TCP socket, but not acknowledged by the remote side yet.
tcprcvbuf .m, .b,.l, .f TCPRCVB The total size (in bytes) of receive buffers for TCP sockets. Amount of kernel memory received from the remote side but not read by the local application yet.
othersockb .m, .b,.l, .f OTHSOCKB The total size in bytes of UNIX-domain socket buffers, UDP and other datagram protocol send buffers.
dgramrcvbuf .m, .b,.l, .f DGRAMRCVB The total size in bytes of receive buffers of UDP and other datagram protocols.
nothersock .m, .b,.l, .f NOTHSOCK The number of socket other than TCP. Local (UNIX-domain) sockets are used for communications inside the system. UDP sockets are used for Domain Name Service (DNS) queries, for example.
dcachesize .m, .b,.l, .f DCACHESIZE The total size in bytes of dentry and inode structures locked in memory. Exists as a separate parameter to impose a limit causing file operations to sense memory shortage and return an error to applications, protecting from excessive consumption of memory due to intensive file system operations.
numfile .m, .b,.l, .f NFILE The number of files opened by all Container processes.
numiptent .m, .b,.l, .f NIPTENT The number of IP packet filtering entries.
diskspace .s, .h DQBLOCKS The total size of disk space consumed by the Container, in 1 Kb blocks. When the space used by a Container hits the barrier, the Container can allocate additional disk space up to the limit during grace period.
diskinodes .s, .h DQINODES The total number of disk inodes (files, directories, symbolic links) a Container can allocate. When the number of inodes used by a Container hits the barrier, the Container can create additional file entries up to the limit during grace period.
laverage none LAVERAGE The average number of processes ready to run during the last 1, 5 and 15 minutes.
cpulimit none CPULIM This is a positive number indicating the CPU time in per cent the corresponding Container is not allowed to exceed.
cpuunits none CPUUNI Allowed CPU power. This is a positive integer number, which determines the minimal guaranteed share of the CPU the Container will receive. You may estimate this share as ((Container CPUUNITS)/(Sum of CPU UNITS across all busy Containers))*100%. The total CPU power depends on CPU and Virtuozzo reporting tools consider one 1 GHz PIII Intel processor to be equivalent to 50,000 CPU units.
slmmode none SLMMOD The SLM mode defining the behaviour of the SLM and UBC parameters in respect of the given Container. It can be one of the following:

  • ubc: the SLM mode is disabled, which means that the slmmemorylimit parameter is not supported and you can use only the UBC parameters to control the amount of memory which can be consumed by the Container.
  • slm: the SLM mode is enabled, which means that the slmmemorylimit parameter is supported and can be used to manage the amount of memory which can be consumed by the Container.
  • all: both the slmmemorylimit and UBC parameters are supported and can be used to manage the amount of memory which can be consumed by the Container.
slminst none SLMINST The instant memory usage limit set for the Container, in 4 KB pages.
slmavg none SLMAVG The average memory usage limit set for the Container, in 4 KB pages.

 

Common OpenVZ Tasks

Common OpenVZ Admin Tasks

vzctl act as a master tool for various tasks:

How Do I Set VPS Name to vps.foo.bar?
# vzctl set 10 --hostname vps.foo.bar --save
How Do I Set VPS IP Address?
# vzctl set 10 --ipadd 1.2.3.4 --save
How Do I Set VPS DNS Name Servers?
# vzctl set 10 --nameserver 8.8.8.8 --save
How Do I Set Disk Quota?
# vzctl set 10 --diskspace SoftLimitG:HardLimitG --save
# vzctl set 10 --diskspace 2G:5G --save
How Do I Stop / Start / Restart VPS Servers?
# vzctl start 10
# vzctl restart 10
# vzctl stop 10
How Do I Run a Command For VPS?

You can run command as follows

# vzctl exec 10 w
# vzctl exec 10 df
# vzctl exec 10 date
# vzctl exec 10 ps aux
How Do I Login Into VPS Server (container)?

Type the following command

# vzctl enter 10

To exit, simply type:

# exit

You can remotely login to your VPS using a ssh client itself or using putty:

$ ssh user@vps.foo.bar
How Do I Destroy VPS?

Type the following command to delete VPS:

# vzctl destroy 10

Cheap VPS Hosting

No Longer Available.

I am starting to host public VPS for anyone interested.  They are OpenVZ containers and I have a few  plans available.


1.  “Lite” $8/mo.
64MB RAM dedicated, 128MB burstable.
512MB Disk Storage
1GHz CPU

2.  “Basic” $12/mo.
128MB RAM dedicated, 256MB burstable.
2GB Disk Storage
100GB Bandwidth
1ghz CPU

3.  “Standard” $20/mo.
256MB RAM dedicated, 512MB burstable.
5GB Disk Storage
200GB Bandwidth
2GHz CPU

Each plan comes with a dedicated public IP address, web control panel (SolusVM), weekly backups offsite, no IO limits.

In the coming days/weeks I will be rolling out Xen and KVM VPS hosting and packages as well.
These VPSes are hosted on 2 IBM System X 3850 X5 systems and connected to a dedicated SAN via dual 8gbit fiber cards.

If you are interested, please let me know.

VMware Player 4.02 Could not find component on update server.

Installed VMware Player 4 today so I could start some development testing on a few applications.  Guest installs went well but afterward when trying to install the VMware tools, I ran into the following error:
 

Could not find component on update server. Contact VMware Support or your system administrator.

 
The following VMware community post has the downloadable ISO images for VMware tools for the guests of VMware player 4.02:
http://communities.vmware.com/message/1991234#1991234