azlin list¶

Discover and filter VMs across resource groups and contexts

Description¶

The azlin list command displays all azlin-managed VMs in table format, showing VM name, status, IP address, region, size, vCPU count, and optionally quota usage and tmux session information. It supports filtering by tags, scanning across all resource groups, and querying multiple Azure contexts for multi-tenant scenarios.

Key features: - Fast listing of VMs in configured resource group (default) - Filter by tags for organizational queries - Show quota usage and remaining capacity - Display active tmux sessions per VM - Multi-context support for complex Azure setups - Prevent VM name truncation with --wide flag

Usage¶

azlin list [OPTIONS]

Options¶

Option	Type	Description
`--resource-group, --rg TEXT`	Name	Resource group to list VMs from (default: from config)
`--config PATH`	File	Path to custom config file (default: `~/.azlin/config.toml`)
`--all`	Flag	Show all VMs including stopped/deallocated ones (default: running only)
`--tag TEXT`	Key or Key=Value	Filter VMs by tag (format: `key` or `key=value`)
`--show-quota / --no-quota`	Flag	Show/hide Azure vCPU quota information (default: show)
`--show-tmux / --no-tmux`	Flag	Show/hide active tmux sessions (default: show)
`-a, --show-all-vms`	Flag	List ALL VMs across ALL resource groups (expensive operation)
`--all-contexts`	Flag	List VMs across all configured contexts (requires context setup)
`--contexts TEXT`	Glob Pattern	List VMs from contexts matching pattern (e.g., `prod`, `dev-`)
`-w, --wide`	Flag	NEW in v0.3.2 - Prevent VM name truncation in output
`-h, --help`	Flag	Show command help and exit

Examples¶

Basic Listing¶

# List running VMs in default resource group
azlin list

# List all VMs including stopped ones
azlin list --all

# List VMs in specific resource group
azlin list --rg my-resource-group

Wide Format (No Truncation)¶

# Show full VM names without truncation (NEW in v0.3.2)
azlin list --wide
azlin list -w

# Useful for long VM names
azlin list --wide --all

Tag-Based Filtering¶

# Filter by tag key (any value)
azlin list --tag environment

# Filter by exact tag key=value
azlin list --tag environment=production
azlin list --tag team=backend
azlin list --tag project=ml-training

# Combine with --all to include stopped VMs
azlin list --tag environment=dev --all

Quota and Session Information¶

# List with quota information (default)
azlin list

# Hide quota information for faster output
azlin list --no-quota

# Hide tmux session information
azlin list --no-tmux

# Minimal output (no quota, no tmux)
azlin list --no-quota --no-tmux

Cross-Resource Group Scanning¶

# List ALL VMs across ALL resource groups (expensive!)
azlin list --show-all-vms
azlin list -a

# Combine with filters
azlin list -a --tag environment=production

Multi-Context Queries¶

# List VMs across all configured contexts
azlin list --all-contexts

# List VMs from production contexts
azlin list --contexts "prod*"

# List VMs from development contexts
azlin list --contexts "*-dev"

# Include stopped VMs across contexts
azlin list --contexts "prod*" --all

Combined Filters¶

# Production VMs, including stopped, with full names
azlin list --tag environment=production --all --wide

# Development VMs without quota display
azlin list --tag environment=dev --no-quota

# All VMs in specific RG with full details
azlin list --rg my-rg --all --wide

Output Format¶

The azlin list command displays a table with the following columns:

Column	Description
Session	Named session with OS icon prefix (e.g., 🟠 for Ubuntu, 🐧 for Linux, 🪟 for Windows)
Tmux Sessions	Active tmux sessions (if `--show-tmux`)
VM Name	VM identifier (only in `--wide` mode)
OS	Operating system name and version (e.g., Ubuntu 25.10, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS)
Status	Running, Stopped, Deallocated, etc.
IP	Public IP (or private IP with "Bast" for bastion-only)
Region	Azure region (e.g., eastus, westus2)
SKU	Azure VM SKU (only in `--wide` mode)
CPU	Number of virtual CPUs
Mem	Memory in GB

Additional footer information: - Total vCPU usage across running VMs - Azure quota limits and remaining capacity (if --show-quota)

Example Output¶

┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━┳━━━━━━┓
┃ Session        ┃ OS               ┃ Status  ┃ IP               ┃ Region  ┃ CPU ┃  Mem ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━╇━━━━━━┩
│ 🟠 ml-train    │ Ubuntu 25.10     │ Running │ 20.123.45.67     │ eastus  │  32 │ 64GB │
│ 🟠 backend-dev │ Ubuntu 22.04 LTS │ Running │ 20.123.45.68     │ westus2 │  16 │ 32GB │
│ 🪟 webapp      │ Windows Server   │ Running │ 20.123.45.69     │ eastus  │   2 │  4GB │
│ 🟠 -           │ Ubuntu 24.04 LTS │ Stopped │ -                │ eastus  │   2 │  4GB │
└────────────────┴──────────────────┴─────────┴──────────────────┴─────────┴─────┴──────┘

Total: 50 vCPUs used | Quota: 100 vCPUs available (50 remaining)

Understanding Quota Display¶

The quota footer shows:

Total vCPUs used: Sum of vCPUs from all running VMs
Quota limit: Azure subscription regional vCPU limit
Remaining: Available vCPUs for new VM provisioning

Example:

Total: 80 vCPUs used | Quota: 100 vCPUs available (20 remaining)

This means: - Current running VMs use 80 vCPUs total - You can provision up to 20 more vCPUs worth of VMs - Attempting to provision a 32-vCPU VM would fail (exceeds 20 remaining)

Understanding Tmux Display¶

The tmux column shows the number of active tmux sessions on each VM:

Number (e.g., 2): Count of running tmux sessions
0: No active tmux sessions (or tmux not installed)
-: VM is stopped/not accessible

Use case: Identify which VMs have active work sessions running.

Performance Considerations¶

Fast Operations¶

azlin list (default resource group) - Fast (~1-2 seconds)
azlin list --rg my-rg - Fast (~1-2 seconds)
azlin list --tag key=value - Fast (client-side filter)

Slow Operations¶

azlin list --show-all-vms - Slow (~10-30 seconds)
Queries all resource groups across subscription
Use sparingly or cache results
azlin list --all-contexts - Slow (~5-60 seconds)
Depends on number of configured contexts
Authenticates to each context separately

Tip: For frequently-used multi-RG queries, use tags instead:

# Instead of slow --show-all-vms
azlin list --show-all-vms --tag project=myapp

# Prefer fast tag-based org + context
azlin list --tag project=myapp --contexts "prod*"

Tag-Based Filtering¶

Tags enable powerful organizational queries:

# Find all VMs for a project
azlin list --tag project=webapp

# Find all production VMs
azlin list --tag environment=production

# Find VMs by team
azlin list --tag team=backend

# Find VMs by cost center
azlin list --tag costcenter=engineering

Best practice: Establish a tagging strategy for your organization: - environment: dev, staging, production - project: Project identifier - team: Team or department - owner: Primary contact - costcenter: Billing allocation

See azlin tag for managing tags.

Multi-Context Scenarios¶

Multi-context support enables querying across: - Multiple Azure subscriptions - Multiple tenants - Different authentication profiles

Setup:

# Create contexts for each subscription
azlin context create prod-eastus --subscription <sub-id> --rg prod-rg
azlin context create prod-westus --subscription <sub-id> --rg prod-rg-west
azlin context create dev-eastus --subscription <sub-id> --rg dev-rg

# Query production VMs across regions
azlin list --contexts "prod-*"

# Query all VMs across all contexts
azlin list --all-contexts

See azlin context for context management.

Troubleshooting¶

No VMs Listed¶

Symptoms: Empty table or "No VMs found" message.

Solutions:

# Verify resource group is correct
azlin list --rg <your-rg>

# Check if VMs are stopped
azlin list --all

# Verify authentication
az account show

# Try cross-RG scan
azlin list --show-all-vms

Quota Display Shows 0/0¶

Symptoms: Quota footer shows "0 vCPUs used | Quota: 0 vCPUs available".

Solutions:

# Check Azure CLI authentication
az account show

# Verify subscription has access
az vm list-usage --location eastus --output table

# Try different region
azlin list --rg <rg> --no-quota  # Skip quota check

Tmux Count Incorrect¶

Symptoms: Tmux column shows 0 but sessions exist, or shows "-" for running VM.

Possible causes: - SSH connection issues (firewall, bastion) - VM not reachable from current network - tmux not installed on VM

Solutions:

# Verify VM is reachable
azlin connect myvm -- echo "test"

# Check tmux manually
azlin connect myvm -- tmux ls

# Skip tmux display
azlin list --no-tmux

VM Names Truncated¶

Symptoms: Long VM names cut off with "..." in table output.

Solution:

# Use wide flag (NEW in v0.3.2)
azlin list --wide
azlin list -w

Slow Performance¶

Symptoms: azlin list takes >10 seconds.

Solutions:

# Disable quota check
azlin list --no-quota

# Disable tmux check
azlin list --no-tmux

# Both disabled for fastest output
azlin list --no-quota --no-tmux

# If using --show-all-vms, try scoping to specific RG
azlin list --rg my-rg  # Much faster

Context Pattern No Match¶

Symptoms: azlin list --contexts "prod*" returns no results.

Solutions:

# List configured contexts
azlin context list

# Verify pattern matches context names
azlin list --contexts "production-*"

# Try wildcard at both ends
azlin list --contexts "*prod*"

Advanced Usage¶

Scripting and Automation¶

# Get VM count
vm_count=$(azlin list --no-quota --no-tmux | grep -c "Running")

# Check if specific VM exists
if azlin list | grep -q "myvm"; then
    echo "VM exists"
fi

# Export VM list (parse table output)
azlin list --wide --no-quota --no-tmux > vms.txt

Monitoring Workflows¶

# Check quota before provisioning
azlin list  # Review "remaining" quota

# Verify new VM appears
azlin new --name test && azlin list

# Monitor multi-region deployment
azlin list --contexts "prod-*" --all

Cost Tracking¶

# Find stopped VMs to deallocate
azlin list --all | grep "Stopped"

# Review large VMs for cost optimization
azlin list --wide | grep "E64"

# See per-team resource usage
azlin list --tag team=backend
azlin list --tag team=frontend

azlin new - Provision new VMs
azlin connect - Connect to VM by name
azlin status - Detailed VM status
azlin session - Manage session names
azlin tag - Manage VM tags
azlin context list - List configured contexts

Source Code¶

vm_manager.py - VM listing logic
cli.py - CLI command definition
context_manager.py - Multi-context support

azlin list¶

Description¶

Usage¶

Options¶

Examples¶

Basic Listing¶

Wide Format (No Truncation)¶

Tag-Based Filtering¶

Quota and Session Information¶

Cross-Resource Group Scanning¶

Multi-Context Queries¶

Combined Filters¶

Output Format¶

Example Output¶

Understanding Quota Display¶

Understanding Tmux Display¶

Performance Considerations¶

Fast Operations¶

Slow Operations¶

Tag-Based Filtering¶

Multi-Context Scenarios¶

Troubleshooting¶

No VMs Listed¶

Quota Display Shows 0/0¶

Tmux Count Incorrect¶

VM Names Truncated¶

Slow Performance¶

Context Pattern No Match¶

Advanced Usage¶

Scripting and Automation¶

Monitoring Workflows¶

Cost Tracking¶

Related Commands¶

Source Code¶

See Also¶