What Does the Shutdown Power Controls in GUI Do ?

nnas21

New Member
Nov 23, 2023
2
0
1
Question to Devs, What does the power button controls in the GUI actually do. Its just taking up space and should be deleted.
 
The buttons on the GUI sends an ACPI poweroff signal to the VM, so it is as if you are pressing the 'virtual' power button on your server.

What actually happens when you do that depends on the OS. Some OSs will initiate their shutdown, or just go into standby/hibernation. Other OSs - usually servers - will ignore the signal. This can usually be configured in the OS.

Whenever you press the GUI button, it sends that ACPI signal to the VM and waits for the QEMU process to be stopped. But when your OS just ignores that, nothing happens and the 'Shutdown' task in the Proxmox GUI runs into a timeout.

Another option is to install the QEMU Guest Agent into your VM, and enable the guest agent in the VM settings on the Proxmox side. Then the Shutdown is initiated 'from inside the VM', through the guest agent.
 
Okay great, why is it in proxmox it is so inconsistent, Im making this post out of frustration. Im thinking maybe devs want to keep our basic linux skills in check. Every other major hypervisor Ive used, ESXi, Xen doesnt have this issue.

Im installing Windows 11, and forgot to attach the virtio drivers ISO, I clicked every power option under the power menu and noting...smh.

Its these niggling issues I cant recommend Proxmox for a main stream production environment. I can deal with it, but not the other admins that dont have any linux experience. I rather pay the cost for ESXi licenses and know I have a reliable product that will work as designed and one that admins can administer.
 
Okay great, why is it in proxmox it is so inconsistent, Im making this post out of frustration. Im thinking maybe devs want to keep our basic linux skills in check. Every other major hypervisor Ive used, ESXi, Xen doesnt have this issue.
I feel you. ESXi prohibits what you did by greying out the guest OS shutdown when it does not detect running vmware tools. That is currently not possible in PVE.

Im installing Windows 11, and forgot to attach the virtio drivers ISO, I clicked every power option under the power menu and noting...smh.
Yes, trying to shutdown the VM (not stopping) without guest agent running or proper ACPI support inside of the VM will hang and no other option will work.

This may be strange behavior to you, but every real machine I ever had works the same way. Either the current running code is capable of receiving the ACPI shutdown and reacts accordingly, or it just ignores it (what @B.Otto said) and that is what QEMU does. We can argue, which is the more and which is the less correct implementation with respect to real hardware. ;)
I have to agree that what VMware does in this special circumstance is more natural than what real hardware and QEMU does.

I rather pay the cost for ESXi licenses and know I have a reliable product that will work as designed and one that admins can administer.
Reliable product? We needed more than once 3rd level support from them for simple things like taking a working backup without crashing the VM with an internal error. VMware is like MS SQL server ... works until you hit - on the first error - some deep internal bug and need to call a developer to analyze the crash. Just those two extremes, nothing in between ... never had such problems with PVE.
Proper VM exporting/importing also not possible with VMware via the GUI, only with ovftool. Luckily you can just ssh into VMware and use it as any other Linux.
And what OS on earth, especially a hypervisor, is not able to backup its own VMs? Com'on .... that's childs play.... and don't get me started on Hyper-V ... good for Windows "admins", yet totally useless for anything else.
 

About

The Proxmox community has been around for many years and offers help and support for Proxmox VE, Proxmox Backup Server, and Proxmox Mail Gateway.
We think our community is one of the best thanks to people like you!

Get your subscription!

The Proxmox team works very hard to make sure you are running the best software and getting stable updates and security enhancements, as well as quick enterprise support. Tens of thousands of happy customers have a Proxmox subscription. Get yours easily in our online shop.

Buy now!