Can’t stop the VM in Proxmox? We can help you do it.
We can stop a virtual machine in Proxmox from the web interface and CLI.
Here at Bobcares, we often receive requests regarding Proxmox as a part of our Server Management Services.
Today, let’s see how our Support Engineers stop a VM in Proxmox.
Stop VM in Proxmox from the web interface
To stop the virtual machine from the web interface, we login to the web GUI.
Then we click on the virtual machine.
After that, we click on Stop.
Thus, we stop the Virtual machine in Proxmox.
Stop VM in Proxmox from CLI
To stop the VM from CLI we log in to the host node.
We first find the VMID using the command.
cat /etc/pve/.vmlist
Once we get the ID we use the below command to stop the virtual machine.
qm stop
How we fix Proxmox cannot stop VM
Recently one of our customers contacted us saying they were not able to stop the VM. Now let’s discuss how our Support Engineers fix the error for our customers.
VM locked
One of the common reasons for ‘can’t stop a VM’ is that the virtual machine might have been locked. This usually happens when we try to stop a virtual machine when a backup is running.
So the VM locks itself to complete the backup process. Thus, we can wait for the backup process to delete the VM. Else we can unlock the virtual machine and stop the VM.
To unlock the VM we log in to the host node.
Then we find the VMID of the virtual machine using the command
cat /etc/pve/.vmlist
Once we get the VMID, we unlock the VM using the command
qm unlock
After we unlock the virtual machine we can delete the virtual machine from the web interface or using CLI.
Thus, we fix the error.
Timeout error
The timeout error occurs when the virtual machine is locked or the process is still running in the background.
If the virtual machine is locked we unlock the VM and stop the VM.
Else we log in to the Host node.
Then we find the PID of the Machine process using the command.
ps aux | grep "/usr/bin/kvm -id VMID"
Once we find the PID we kill the process using the command.
kill -9 PID
Thus, the VM will stop.
Stop from CLI
We have come across many instances that stops the VM from the web interface to do the tasks.
Thus, we stop the virtual machine from the node. To stop the VM first we find the VMID.
Thus we use the below command to stop the virtual machine
qm stop
Then on refreshing the web interface, we can see that the virtual machine is stopped.
[Need any further assistance with Proxmox? – We’ll help you]
Conclusion
In short, we have discussed how we stop the VM from the web interface and CLI. Also, we have discussed how our Support Engineers fix the error when stopping the virtual machine.
Great tip! Worked for me!
thanks, exactly what I needed. stuck on a boot CD and couldn’t get the passthru gpu to remove…
Hi,
Please contact our support team via live chat(click on the icon at right-bottom).
Perfect! Thank you!
This saved me from a long unnecessary reboot, thanks !
Hello Carlos,
Thanks for the feedback.Glad to know that our article was helpful for you.
very helpful thx a lot