How to Forcefully Stop a Stuck VM in Proxmox VE Without Rebooting the Host?

[m.rosales]

Hello everyone,

I’m running into an issue with one of my VMs on Proxmox VE. The machine is still listed as running, but I’ve completely lost access to it. The console opens, but all I get is a black screen with no cursor, and it won’t take any keyboard input. SSH is also unreachable.

I’ve already attempted to shut it down, stop it, and even reboot it from the GUI, but it just refuses to terminate and keeps on going. Since I have several other VMs running, I’d prefer not to reboot the whole host.

Does anyone have suggestions on how I could force this specific VM to stop?

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[leesteken]

Stop should work but it might not work while a Shutdown is still running. Reboot does a Shutdown first, which therefore both require that the VM is cooperative.
What is the VM configuration (qm config) and what is the output of a new Stop Task?

EDIT: qm list also shows the process ID per VM.

 

[waltar]

See with "ps -ef|grep kv[m]" which is the correct pid for the vm. Then stop it with "kill -9 <pid>" (enter right pid inside which seen by the ps cmd).

 

[pcarone]

Hi,

You can drop into the Proxmox shell and identify the process that corresponds to the stuck VM. Usually it will appear as a kvm process with the VM’s ID. You can check with something like:

ps -efww | grep [VMID]

Once you find the correct process ID, you can terminate it using:

kill -9 [processid]

That should immediately stop the VM without impacting your other guests.

Hope this helps, and good luck!