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

["Michael Köppl" <m.koeppl@proxmox.com>]

On Mon Mar 2, 2026 at 4:10 PM CET, Fiona Ebner wrote:
> 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.

Ack, thanks! I'll send a v2.