Playing with Xenstore

So, I have been playing around with xenstore-ls and xenstore-read commands on my Virtual Machine in the cloud. Basically xenstore-ls and xenstore-read are used to retrieve variable information about the network settings which are passed to a vdi when it is being built. Also if the network configuration breaks there is a way to use xenstore-write to read the vm-data read only network variables and the nova agent will be called to reset it.

I am still familiarizing myself with this so apologies if there are any mistakes. This article will be updated as I learn more about it.

Commands available on Rackspace Virtual Machines

xenstore         xenstore-chmod   xenstore-exists  xenstore-list    xenstore-ls      xenstore-read    xenstore-rm      xenstore-watch   xenstore-write

There are several things we can do

1. Show the Data associated with the VM, including mem_free, mem_total of the instance, the OS version (8), the os_name, distro, and the uname for the kernel.

 root@dingdong:~# xenstore-ls data
host = ""
meminfo_total = "1018872"
meminfo_free = "560180"
os_name = "Debian GNU/Linux 8.1 (jessie)"
os_majorver = "8"
os_minorver = "1"
os_uname = "3.16.0-4-amd64"
os_distro = "debian"
updated = "Fri Aug 28 17:30:00 BST 2015"
guest = ""
 9cab4aed-0d29-4c7e-be2f-e15f1ed33231 = "{"message": "1.39.1", "returncode": "0"}"
 6f38e0e1-6606-4245-8c8f-560c0204b419 = "{"message": "109108621899310233456141728258155", "returncode": "D0"}"
 c96d2b6e-31fb-489f-882c-790da25dbe1a = "{"message": "", "returncode": "0"}"
 be73ed2e-5c5a-4183-861b-2b6faaf8b09b = "{"message": "", "returncode": "0"}"
 ad730c7c-3c5e-4ba7-bfcc-8400a2675566 = "{"message": "75660051671748071924891088737764", "returncode": "D0"}"
 d3536286-4447-4f5b-84cc-8b6b1f61989c = "{"message": "", "returncode": "0"}"
 PresentationForAdamOfHowXenstoreWork = "{"message": "", "returncode": "0"}"

As you can see from above my colleague was helping make a presentation for me as to how this actually works!

Listing all of the current vm-data

 

xenstore-ls vm-data

networking = ""
 BC764E08E370 = "{"label": "private", "broadcast": "10.179.255.255", "ips": [{"ip": "10.179.197.101", "netmask": "255.255.192.0", "enabled": "1", "gateway": null}], "mac": \..."
 BC764E086A56 = "{"ip6s": [{"ip": "2a00:1a48:7806:115:be76:4eff:fe08:6a56", "netmask": 64, "enabled": "1", "gateway": "fe80::def"}], "label": "public", "broadcast": "162.13\..."
meta = "{"rxtx_cap": 120.0}"
hostname = "dingdong"
auto-disk-config = "False"
provider_data = ""
 ip_whitelist = ""
  54 = "10.182.5.215"
  53 = "134.213.147.236"
  52 = "10.182.5.234"
  51 = "134.213.148.114"
  50 = "10.179.0.222"
  49 = "10.179.75.22"
  48 = "162.13.1.53"
  47 = "95.138.174.55"
  46 = "162.13.5.15"
  45 = "10.177.132.233"
  44 = "31.222.169.12"
  43 = "10.179.0.234"
  42 = "10.177.199.231"
  41 = "10.179.0.159"
  40 = "10.176.3.232"
  39 = "10.176.3.236"
  38 = "10.176.3.239"
  37 = "10.176.3.235"
  36 = "10.177.5.90"
  35 = "10.177.5.89"
  34 = "10.177.5.88"
  33 = "10.177.1.73"
  32 = "10.176.3.158"
  31 = "10.177.0.105"
  30 = "162.13.5.96"
  29 = "5.79.25.90"
  28 = "162.209.3.51"
  27 = "162.13.22.243"
  26 = "162.13.22.242"
  25 = "166.78.7.98"
  24 = "166.78.17.140"
  23 = "166.78.24.91"
  22 = "31.222.184.215"
  21 = "31.222.184.38"
  20 = "46.38.166.180"
  19 = "46.38.160.93"
  18 = "31.222.157.156"
  17 = "31.222.177.183"
  16 = "31.222.177.167"
  15 = "31.222.164.168"
  14 = "31.222.180.84"
  13 = "31.222.161.245"
  12 = "173.203.157.20"
  11 = "119.9.12.98"
  10 = "119.9.12.91"
  9 = "162.13.1.53"
  8 = "95.138.174.55"
  7 = "162.209.4.155"
  6 = "166.78.107.18"
  5 = "50.56.249.239"
  4 = "166.78.7.146"
  3 = "89.234.21.64/28"
  2 = "67.192.155.96/27"
  1 = "173.203.5.160/27"
  0 = "173.203.32.136/29"
 roles = "["object-store:default", "compute:default", "identity:user-admin"]"
 region = "lon"
 provider = "Rackspace"
user-metadata = ""
 build_config = ""monitoring_defaults,monitoring_agent_only,auto_updates""
 rax_service_level_automation = ""Complete""
allowvssprovider = "false"

It is possible to retrieve specific information like networking configuration

xenstore-ls vm-data/networking
BC764E08E370 = "{"label": "private", "broadcast": "10.179.255.255", "ips": [{"ip": "10.179.197.101", "netmask": "255.255.192.0", "enabled": "1", "gateway": null}], "mac": "\..."
BC764E086A56 = "{"ip6s": [{"ip": "2a00:1a48:7806:115:be76:4eff:fe08:6a56", "netmask": 64, "enabled": "1", "gateway": "fe80::def"}], "label": "public", "broadcast": "162.13.\..."

The format here is kind of nasty, so there is a tool that we can use called jq

Filtering Network Data for MAC interfaces


apt-get update
apt-get install jq

xenstore-read vm-data/networking/BC764E086A56 | jq .

{
  "ip6s": [
    {
      "ip": "2a00:1a48:7806:115:be76:4eff:fe08:6a56",
      "netmask": 64,
      "enabled": "1",
      "gateway": "fe80::def"
    }
  ],
  "label": "public",
  "broadcast": "162.13.86.255",
  "ips": [
    {
      "ip": "162.13.86.79",
      "netmask": "255.255.255.0",
      "enabled": "1",
      "gateway": "162.13.86.1"
    }
  ],
  "mac": "BC:76:4E:08:6A:56",
  "gateway_v6": "fe80::def",
  "dns": [
    "83.138.151.81",
    "83.138.151.80"
  ],
  "gateway": "162.13.86.1"
}

Lots of cool stuff there. Including the Rackspace Service Net and Rackspace Public Net configurations. It’s possible to use jq to filter the JSON output of the xenstore-read command by filtering less.

Filtering ips network data with JQ

 

 xenstore-read vm-data/networking/BC764E086A56 | jq .ips
[
  {
    "ip": "162.13.86.79",
    "netmask": "255.255.255.0",
    "enabled": "1",
    "gateway": "162.13.86.1"
  }
]

There are a lot more things that can be done, however this is all I have time for , today.

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Playing with Xenstore