XenOrchestra not showing VM Disks on Pool (on single Server working) - XCP-ng Center is showing them

kagbasi-wgsdac

@olivierlambert Any chance you can have someone please take a look at this thread? The issue persists and is creating problems for me. If someone out there has figured out the solution, kindly share, thanks.

olivierlambert

Hi,

I think it's a known problem, let me ping @poddingue so he gives you a quick recap on the situation (or someone from the team storage)

kagbasi-wgsdac

@olivierlambert Thanks for the response, much appreciated.

I'm getting ready to file a bug report, as I noticed this morning that this issue is now causing a VDI-IN-USE error; preventing me from starting a VM. Fortunately, that VM isn't critical, so I want to report it and help with the troubleshooting that will lead to a fix before it spreads.

poddingue

Here's the short version: this looks like the known "VDIs show up as snapshots" bug, and you haven't done anything wrong.
What happens is a metadata flag on the VDI, is-a-snapshot, gets flipped to true after some of the recent 8.3 host updates, so XO (both 5 and 6) thinks those disks are snapshots and hides them from the per-VM Disks tab, even though the VDIs are fine and xe / XCP-ng Center still show them.
A few older threads track the same thing, the main one is https://xcp-ng.org/forum/topic/11715/vdi-not-showing-in-xo-5-from-source . From what's said there, the fix is expected in two parts: stopping it from happening again, and a way to repair the flag on VDIs that are already affected.
I don't have a timeline and could be off on the details, so please don't take that as official.
In the meantime people have made the disks reappear by migrating the affected VDI to another SR, or snapshot then revert then delete the snapshot, but it's a visual fix and can come back.
The VDI_IN_USE you're now hitting on start does sound worth its own detailed report, so yes please file it with the xapi/sm versions and that malformed is-a-snapshot field, and it'd be good to loop in @Team-Storage. Sorry you're stuck on this.

kagbasi-wgsdac

@poddingue Thanks for the response. I got side tracked with another issue and didn't get that bug report filed, I'll do that as soon as possible.

It feels like I'm playing with a hand grenade...lol, quite scary!

kagbasi-wgsdac

@poddingue Bug report filed as requested — https://github.com/xcp-ng/xcp/issues/825 — and tagging @Team-Storage per your suggestion.

Full evidence bundle is attached to the issue (versions, sweep output, vhd-util vs xe comparison, SMlog). Summary of what I found:

One correction to the mechanism, and I think it matters. The recap describes is-a-snapshot being flipped to true. On my system that isn't what's happening — is-a-snapshot is false on every affected VDI. The field being wrongly written is snapshot-of, which is getting populated on base disks that aren't snapshots at all. XO's disappearing-disks symptom is consistent with either (it filters on a non-empty snapshot-of), but if the storage team is hunting for a bad is-a-snapshot write, that may be the wrong field. Every affected VDI here looks like:

is-a-snapshot: false      <-- correct
snapshot-of:   <populated with an unrelated VDI's UUID>   <-- wrong

A VDI that is a snapshot of itself. The clearest single artifact:

uuid:          806f7f42-083f-4a40-b3f1-0700d00bab5a
name-label:    WinSrv2022SHB_Disk1_Data
is-a-snapshot: false
snapshot-of:   806f7f42-083f-4a40-b3f1-0700d00bab5a   <-- itself
snapshot-time: 20260709T11:19:15Z
sm-config:     vhd-parent: c86e3247-...   <-- bears no relation to the snapshot-of value

No valid code path produces snapshot-of = self. Whatever writes this field isn't validating the target.

It's still actively corrupting new VDIs — this is not just legacy damage. That self-referential VDI was created 2026-07-09, a week after my patch + reboot. Sweeps 9 days apart went from ~180 → 191 affected VDIs on one SR, and a fourth anchor UUID appeared that didn't exist in the first sweep. Newly created VHDs keep landing in the affected set. So "stop it happening again" is the urgent half of the two-part fix, at least in my case.

The bogus targets cluster onto a tiny anchor set, and the anchors point at each other:

Count	Anchor
97	`937c3945` (→ `a893fdb4`)
50	`a893fdb4` (→ `ea150883`)
37	`ea150883`
7	`806f7f42` (→ itself, new since Jul 9)

That looks less like corrupted lineage and more like the field being filled from an incorrect/uninitialised source.

On-disk VHDs are completely healthy. vhd-util check says valid, parent locators are consistent, GC reports no work. The two VDIs the DB calls parent/child are, on disk, siblings under a common parent. The corruption is purely in the XAPI database — which is good news for recoverability.

The VDI_IN_USE is not a real lock. current-operations is empty, xe task-list is empty, no tapdisk holds it. VM.start fails because it's walking a snapshot relationship that doesn't exist on disk. Reproduces from xe on the pool master with XO entirely out of the path — which is why I filed against xcp-ng/xcp rather than the XO tracker.

Versions: XCP-ng 8.3.0, xapi 26.1.11 (xapi-core-26.1.11-1.2), sm-3.2.12-17.9, sm-fairlock-3.2.12-17.9, blktap 3.55.5-9.1, build 20260618.

I have not attempted to bulk-clear the fields — on-disk data is intact and I'd rather not do a mass write against the XAPI DB on a live SR without guidance. Backing store snapshotted as a safety net.

Happy to run whatever diagnostics would help. And +1 to the hand-grenade feeling — the affected set growing on its own is the part that worries me.

poddingue

@kagbasi-wgsdac , thank you so much for the issue creation and the details, that will help for sure!

kagbasi-wgsdac

@poddingue You're most welcome, sir.

john.c

@kagbasi-wgsdac said:

@poddingue Bug report filed as requested — https://github.com/xcp-ng/xcp/issues/825 — and tagging @Team-Storage per your suggestion.

Full evidence bundle is attached to the issue (versions, sweep output, vhd-util vs xe comparison, SMlog). Summary of what I found:

One correction to the mechanism, and I think it matters. The recap describes is-a-snapshot being flipped to true. On my system that isn't what's happening — is-a-snapshot is false on every affected VDI. The field being wrongly written is snapshot-of, which is getting populated on base disks that aren't snapshots at all. XO's disappearing-disks symptom is consistent with either (it filters on a non-empty snapshot-of), but if the storage team is hunting for a bad is-a-snapshot write, that may be the wrong field. Every affected VDI here looks like:
is-a-snapshot: false      <-- correct
snapshot-of:   <populated with an unrelated VDI's UUID>   <-- wrong
A VDI that is a snapshot of itself. The clearest single artifact:
uuid:          806f7f42-083f-4a40-b3f1-0700d00bab5a
name-label:    WinSrv2022SHB_Disk1_Data
is-a-snapshot: false
snapshot-of:   806f7f42-083f-4a40-b3f1-0700d00bab5a   <-- itself
snapshot-time: 20260709T11:19:15Z
sm-config:     vhd-parent: c86e3247-...   <-- bears no relation to the snapshot-of value
No valid code path produces snapshot-of = self. Whatever writes this field isn't validating the target.

It's still actively corrupting new VDIs — this is not just legacy damage. That self-referential VDI was created 2026-07-09, a week after my patch + reboot. Sweeps 9 days apart went from ~180 → 191 affected VDIs on one SR, and a fourth anchor UUID appeared that didn't exist in the first sweep. Newly created VHDs keep landing in the affected set. So "stop it happening again" is the urgent half of the two-part fix, at least in my case.

The bogus targets cluster onto a tiny anchor set, and the anchors point at each other:

Count Anchor

97 937c3945 (→ a893fdb4)

50 a893fdb4 (→ ea150883)

37 ea150883

7 806f7f42 (→ itself, new since Jul 9)

That looks less like corrupted lineage and more like the field being filled from an incorrect/uninitialised source.

On-disk VHDs are completely healthy. vhd-util check says valid, parent locators are consistent, GC reports no work. The two VDIs the DB calls parent/child are, on disk, siblings under a common parent. The corruption is purely in the XAPI database — which is good news for recoverability.

The VDI_IN_USE is not a real lock. current-operations is empty, xe task-list is empty, no tapdisk holds it. VM.start fails because it's walking a snapshot relationship that doesn't exist on disk. Reproduces from xe on the pool master with XO entirely out of the path — which is why I filed against xcp-ng/xcp rather than the XO tracker.

Versions: XCP-ng 8.3.0, xapi 26.1.11 (xapi-core-26.1.11-1.2), sm-3.2.12-17.9, sm-fairlock-3.2.12-17.9, blktap 3.55.5-9.1, build 20260618.

I have not attempted to bulk-clear the fields — on-disk data is intact and I'd rather not do a mass write against the XAPI DB on a live SR without guidance. Backing store snapshotted as a safety net.

Happy to run whatever diagnostics would help. And +1 to the hand-grenade feeling — the affected set growing on its own is the part that worries me.

Has this issue been validated on a storage server built around Debian 13, LVM and ext4 or just TrueNAS when connected to XCP-ng version 8.3.0. As part of the XAPI DB corruption. Can anyone answer this please or give a clue?

kagbasi-wgsdac

@john.c Unfortunately, I cannot answer your question in the affirmative. I only use XCP-ng with TrueNAS.

@Team-Storage have y'all had a chance to take a look at the bug report I filed? This issue is quite serious.