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Appendix A. Command Line Interface
This chapter describes the XenServer command line interface (CLI). The xe CLI enables the writing of scripts for
automating system administration tasks and allows integration of XenServer into an existing IT infrastructure.
The xe command line interface is installed by default on XenServer hosts and is included with XenCenter. A stand-
alone remote CLI is also available for Linux.
On Windows, the xe.exe CLI executable is installed along with XenCenter.
To use it, open a Windows Command Prompt and change directories to the directory where the file resides
(typically C:\Program Files\Citrix\XenCenter), or add its installation location to your system path.
On RPM-based distributions (such as, Red Hat and CentOS), you can install the stand-alone xe CLI executable from
the RPM named xe-cli-6.00-@BUILD_NUMBER@.i386.rpm on the main XenServer installation ISO, as
follows:
rpm -ivh xe-cli-6.00-@BUILD_NUMBER@.i386.rpm
Basic help is available for CLI commands on-host by typing:
xe help command
A list of the most commonly-used xe commands is displayed if you type:
xe help
or a list of all xe commands is displayed if you type:
xe help --all
Basic xe Syntax
The basic syntax of all XenServer xe CLI commands is:
xe <command-name> <argument=value> <argument=value> ...
Each specific command contains its own set of arguments that are of the form argument=value. Some
commands have required arguments, and most have some set of optional arguments. Typically a command will
assume default values for some of the optional arguments when invoked without them.
If the xe command is executed remotely, additional connection and authentication arguments are used. These
arguments also take the form argument=argument_value.
The server argument is used to specify the hostname or IP address. The username and password
arguments are used to specify credentials. A password-file argument can be specified instead of the
password directly. In this case an attempt is made to read the password from the specified file (stripping CRs and
LFs off the end of the file if necessary), and use that to connect. This is more secure than specifying the password
directly at the command line.
The optional port argument can be used to specify the agent port on the remote XenServer host (defaults to
443).
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: