[PVE-User] VM shutdown with qemu-guest-agent installed and enabled does not work

[Jan Vlach]

Hi pve-users, 

I have fully patched proxmox 7.3 (non-subscription repo) with kernel 5.15.83-1-pve and I can't shutdown VMs from webUI. The task times out and is ignored in the VM.

on CLI:
Guest agent is enabled and running:

# qm agent 112 ping 
# qm agent 112 shutdown 
{
   "error" : {
      "class" : "GenericError",
      "desc" : "child process has failed to shutdown"
   }
}

versus disabled & rebooted: # here it could be shut down via ACPI

# qm agent 112 ping 
QEMU guest agent is not running

With qemu disabled, regardless if it's installed, ACPI event is sent into VM and shutdown procedure gets run. 

I've tested fully patched Debian Bullseye 11/amd64, Cisco Ironport appliances (freebsd-based) and plain FreeBSD13. 

So far, I've been installing guest agent to see the assigned IP address in summary and probably also for fs-freeze and fs-thaw during PBS backups.



I've found a post from 2018 describing my problem after my debugging at:https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/vm-shutdown-when-qemu-guest-agent-enabled.43404/ <https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/vm-shutdown-when-qemu-guest-agent-enabled.43404/>

Does this work? Should this work? Has this ever been patched? Lots of water passed between today and 2018 ...

Thank you,
JV