Install a Patch on a Citrix XenServer 6.2 Host Using the xe Command Line

3 Parts:

Install The Xenserver 6.2 Update Using The Xe Command

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One of the limitations of using the free version of Citrix XenServer 6.2 is that you cannot use the XenCenter interface to install patches on your hosts. The idea is that you'll pay Citrix for a support contract to get the full version of XenCenter that lets you do a lot of the advanced work without having to learn the command-line steps. Fortunately, installing update patches on a host is relatively simple and straightforward using the xe command.

Even though you can't install them, XenCenter does tell you that updates are available when you connect to a server (see the top right corner for "System Alerts"). When you click on the System Alerts link, it will give you a popup with more details, in this image, update XS62ESP1014 is available for server "b2".

Important: If your XenServer hosts are part of a pool, you need to install the patch on the pool master first.

Get The Link To The Zip File That You'll Download To The Server

1. 1
   Click "Go to Web Page" at the bottom of the System Alert popup. This will open a page on the citrix.com website with more details about the update.

   

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2. 2
   Click the blue "Download" button. This will take you to the Citrix Download Manager page.

   

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3. 3
   Right-click on the "Download Your File Manually" link at the bottom of the page, and then select "Copy Link Location" (Firefox) or "Copy Address" (Chrome) or "Copy Shortcut" (IE).

   

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Download and Install the Update on the XenServer Host

Remember: If your host is part of a pool, these steps need to be run on the pool master only. The master will push the updates to all the other servers that are part of the pool automatically. Then they'll only need to be rebooted afterward to take effect (still reboot the master first).

1. 1
   SSH to your XenServer host using root or a root-capable account.

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2. 2
   Download the update zip file using wget and pasting the link you copied from the Citrix webpage.

   

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3. 3
   Unzip the file with the unzip command.

   

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4. 4
   Tell the server about the patch using the "Xe Patch-Upload" command. You need to add the filename parameter which will be the .xsupdate file that was extracted in the previous step. The patch-upload command will output a UUID for the patch that you will need in the next step.

   

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5. 5
   If the host is not part of a pool: Apply the patch using the "Xe Patch-Apply" command with the UUID and host-UUID parameters. The UUID will be the output from the xe patch-upload command. The easiest way to get the host-UUID is to simply press the Tab key after typing "host-uuid=" - this will automatically populate the field with the local host's UUID - otherwise, you'll need to get the output of the xe host-list command as well. Note: The patch-apply may take several seconds to run.

   

   
   If host is the pool master:
   Apply the patch using the "Xe Patch-Pool-Apply" command with the UUID parameter output from the xe patch-upload command. Note: The patch-pool-apply may take up to a couple of minutes to run, as it has to apply the patch to all hosts in the pool.

   

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6. 6
   Because the default partitioning of XenServer does not leave a lot of space for extra files to accumulate, it's a good idea to clean up the XS62* files that you no longer need.

   

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7. 7
   The host likely needs to be rebooted for the patch to be fully applied. This, you can do using XenCenter.

   

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Is there any difference in the procedure, if using XenServer 6.5?

Want to know if installing a patch on version 6.5 is the same as 6.2. I'm now using XenServer 6.5 instead of 6.2 when the article was written. I have tried: I haven't tried anything yet. Thought I'd ask before going through the steps. I think it was caused by: Don't know if there is a problem. Just asking because of the version change.

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If you have problems with any of the steps in this article, please ask a question for more help, or post in the comments section below.

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