Re: [PATCH manager v1 1/1] api: startall: print info message if guest is skipped due to no onboot

[Fiona Ebner <f.ebner@proxmox.com>]

Am 02.03.26 um 4:02 PM schrieb Michael Köppl:
> On Mon Mar 2, 2026 at 3:09 PM CET, Fiona Ebner wrote:
>> Am 02.03.26 um 2:49 PM schrieb Michael Köppl:
>>> The documentation states that startall only starts guests with
>>> onboot=1 by default, and that this behavior can be overridden using the
>>> force parameter. However, when startall is invoked via the pvenode CLI
>>> without the force parameter, the Bulk Start task silently completes with
>>> just "TASK OK", giving no indication of why certain VMs were not started.
>>> The added informational message addresses this by clearly communicating
>>> to users why those VMs were skipped.
>>>
>>> Signed-off-by: Michael Köppl <m.koeppl@proxmox.com>
>>> ---
>>> I encountered this while using startall and stopall myself and while
>>> RTFM would indeed have helped, I still felt that an informational
>>> message would improve the user's experience, especially since stopall
>>> will stop all VMs without force=1, whereas startall requires the force
>>> param. I only added the informational messages and did not change any
>>> behavior because the behavior makes sense to me after thinking about
>>> it some more.
>>>
>>>  PVE/API2/Nodes.pm | 7 ++++++-
>>>  1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
>>>
>>> diff --git a/PVE/API2/Nodes.pm b/PVE/API2/Nodes.pm
>>> index 5bd6fe492..3faa1e800 100644
>>> --- a/PVE/API2/Nodes.pm
>>> +++ b/PVE/API2/Nodes.pm
>>> @@ -1969,7 +1969,12 @@ sub get_start_stop_list {
>>>      my $resList = {};
>>>      foreach my $vmid (keys %$vmlist) {
>>>          my $conf = $vmlist->{$vmid}->{conf};
>>> -        next if $autostart && !$conf->{onboot};
>>> +
>>> +        if ($autostart && !$conf->{onboot}) {
>>> +            print
>>> +                "skipping $vmid because 'onboot' is not set in guest config, use 'force' parameter to override\n";
>>> +            next;
>>> +        }
>>
>> I think printing it for every single guest without onboot is too much,
>> because there could be thousands of such guests. One message at the
>> beginning of the API call should be enough.
>>
> 
> Yeah, I wasn't entirely sure printing it for every guest is a good idea
> either. Thanks for the feedback. I guess something like "skipping guests
> without 'onboot' set in guest config, use 'force' param to override"
> once at the beginning?
> 
>> And I feel like the invocation from pve-guests.service should not have
>> such a message end up in syslog to avoid confusion. It uses
>> /usr/bin/pvesh --nooutput create /nodes/localhost/startall
>> so maybe this is already the case. Could you check?
>>
> 
> I agree, but --nooutput does not seem to prevent this. I'll have a look
> how this can be avoided.

If it can't easily be avoided, I guess the message is best formulated in
a purely descriptive way, i.e. without "use to override", and rather
just mention that it's because force is not set.