[libvirt-users] Full documentation for virsh?

[Cole Robinson]

On 05/05/2010 04:15 PM, David Ehle wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> Does anyone know where full documentation for virsh can be found? Or if 
> the there are any plans to update the man page?
> 
> The man page lists far fewer commands than virsh lists from its 
> interactive mode when you type help.
> 
> I noticed this when I was trying to figure out the difference between 
> pool-destroy, and pool-delete. The help entries in the virsh shell are not 
> very informative:
> virsh # help pool-destroy
>    NAME
>      pool-destroy - destroy a pool
> 
>    SYNOPSIS
>      pool-destroy <pool>
> 
>    DESCRIPTION
>      Destroy a given pool.
> 
>    OPTIONS
>      <pool>           pool name or uuid
> 
> virsh # help pool-delete
>    NAME
>      pool-delete - delete a pool
> 
>    SYNOPSIS
>      pool-delete <pool>
> 
>    DESCRIPTION
>      Delete a given pool.
> 
>    OPTIONS
>      <pool>           pool name or uuid
> 
> ... unless you already know how virsh defines delete vs destroy.

In libvirt terminology, 'destroy' means 'force shutdown'. This has
different meanings for different things. For a VM, it is like pulling
out the power plug. For a directory pool, it just marks the pool as
'inactive'. For an NFS pool, it will actually unmount the NFS share from
the host running libvirt.

pool-delete will actually delete the underlying storage, so for a
directory pool this will actually remove the directory from the disk.

If you just want to tell libvirt to 'forget' about a pool and not list
it anymore, use pool-undefine. This is a safe operation and will not
harm any of your underlying storage.

- Cole