Citrix Systems 5.6 manual Special characters and syntax

Example: On the local XenServer host:

xe vm-list

Example: On the remote XenServer host:

xe vm-list -user <username> -password <password> -server <hostname>

Shorthand syntax is also available for remote connection arguments:

-u	username
-pw	password
-pwf	password file
-p	port
-s	server

Example: On a remote XenServer host:

xe vm-list-u<myuser> -pw<mypassword> -s<hostname>

Arguments are also taken from the environment variable XE_EXTRA_ARGS, in the form of comma-separated key/value pairs. For example, in order to enter commands on one XenServer host that are run on a remote XenServer host, you could do the following:

export XE_EXTRA_ARGS="server=jeffbeck,port=443,username=root,password=pass"

This command means that you will not need to specify the remote XenServer host parameters anymore, in each xe command you execute.

Using the XE_EXTRA_ARGS environment variable also enables tab completion of xe commands when issued against a remote XenServer host, which is disabled by default.

Special characters and syntax

To specify argument/value pairs on the xe command line, write:

argument=value

Unless the value includes spaces, do not use quotes. There should be no whitespace in between the argument name, the equals sign (=), and the value. Any argument not conforming to this format will be ignored.

For values containing spaces, write:

argument="value with spaces"

If you use the CLI while logged into a XenServer host, commands have a tab completion feature similar to that in the standard Linux bash shell. If you type, for examplexe vm-land then press the TAB key, the rest of the command will be displayed when it is unambiguous. If more than one command begins with vm-

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