Proxmox VMs/CTs all stopped after failed backup to PBS

[claytonbcollins]

The other night I forgot Proxmox was going to run the backup schedule to the PBS in the middle of the night, so I temporarily shutdown the PBS that night - thus the PVE was unable to perform the scheduled backup. Now, all the VMs/CTs have the greyed out question mark and say "Status: unknown". And at the bottom of the screen, the tasks say "Error: CT is locked (backup)". I was hopeful that just having it try again on the backup would help, so I went to Datacenter > Backup > {selected scheduled backup} > Run Now - But now it's stuck showing a pop-up window that says "Please wait... 0/0", and it just sits there. Please help. Please let me know what I need to provide you to assist with diagnosing this issue. Thank you.

 

[claytonbcollins]

Anybody?

 

[claytonbcollins]

Never mind, it seems to have resolved itself after a few days and a few reboots. Maybe someone could provide some insights as to what I can learn from this, other than to not schedule a location that isn't available. How about a way that I can make it check the backup location is viable first? Any input, please?

 

[Johannes S]

You can try to unlock vms and containers with pct unlock <container_id> for a lxc and qm unlock <vmid> for vms like written in the manual page:
https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/qm.1.html
https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/pct.1.html

For the question mark: My guess is that the guests where locked due to the failed backup. Google found an older discussion on this with quite an enlightening quote from Proxmox staff member @dcsapak:

For several actions in pve (the listed ones, e.g. backup/create/etc.) pve locks the vm config so that no two operations interfere with each other
since that lock itself is part of the config file it shows up in the autogenerated man page/docs

'unlock' is a special implemented command, so that a leftover lock (e.g. after a host crash during such a lock) can be removed again by an admin

generally you do not need/want to lock a vm/ct, nor should you normally need to unlock a vm/ct

https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/locking-and-unlocking-containers.84089/

So yes the main take away is to ensure that your backup location is up and running