Appendix F. Troubleshooting VM Problems

Citrix provides two forms of support: free, self-help support on the Citrix Support website and paid-for Support Services, which you can purchase from the Support Site. With Citrix Technical Support, you can open a Support Case online or contact the support center by phone if you experience technical difficulties.

The Citrix Knowledge Center hosts a number of resources that may be helpful to you if you experience odd behavior, crashes, or other problems. Resources include: Support Forums, Knowledge Base articles and product documentation.

If you experience odd VM behavior, this chapter is meant to help you solve the problem if possible and, failing that, describes where the application logs are located and other information that can help your XenServer Solution Provider and Citrix track and resolve the issue.

Troubleshooting of installation issues is covered in the XenServer Installation Guide. Troubleshooting of XenServer host issues is covered in the XenServer Administrator's Guide.

Note:

Citrix recommends that you follow the troubleshooting information in this chapter solely under the guidance of your XenServer Solution Provider or Citrix Support.

F.1. VM Crashes

If you are experiencing VM crashes, it is possible that a kernel crash dump can help identify the problem. If the crash is reproducible, follow this procedure to send the crash dumps to Citrix.

F.1.1. Controlling Linux VM Crashdump Behaviour

For Linux VMs, the crashdump behavior can be controlled through the actions-after-crashparameter. The following are the possible values:

Value	Description

preserve	leave the VM in a paused state (for analysis)

coredump_and_restart	record a core dump, then reboot the VM

coredump_and_destroy	record a core dump, leave VM halted

restart	no core dump, just reboot VM (this is the default)

destroy	no coredump, leave VM halted

To enable saving of Linux VM crash dumps

1.On the XenServer host, determine the UUID of the desired VM by running the command:

xe vm-list name-label=<name>params=uuid --minimal

2.Change the actions-after-crashvalue using xe vm-param-set; for example:

xe vm-param-set uuid=<vm_uuid> actions-after-crash=coredump_and_restart

F.1.2. Controlling Windows VM Crashdump Behaviour

For Windows VMs, the core dump behavior cannot be controlled by the actions-after-crashparameter. By default Windows crash dumps are put into %SystemRoot%\Minidump in the Windows VM itself.