I'm sorry I forgot to add that the syslog has also stopped since the server was restarted
and late trying start VM manually the response was this
malformed JSON string, neither tag, array, object, number, string or atom, at character offset 0 (before "(end of string)") at /usr/share/perl5/PVE/Tools.pm line 949, <GEN30> chunk 1.
root@proxmox:~# pveversion -v
proxmox-ve: 5.2-2 (running kernel: 4.15.17-1-pve)
pve-manager: 5.2-1 (running version: 5.2-1/0fcd7879)
pve-kernel-4.15: 5.2-1
pve-kernel-4.15.17-1-pve: 4.15.17-9
corosync: 2.4.2-pve5
criu: 2.11.1-1~bpo90
glusterfs-client: 3.8.8-1
ksm-control-daemon: 1.2-2
libjs-extjs: 6.0.1-2
libpve-access-control: 5.0-8
libpve-apiclient-perl: 2.0-4
libpve-common-perl: 5.0-31
libpve-guest-common-perl: 2.0-16
libpve-http-server-perl: 2.0-8
libpve-storage-perl: 5.0-23
libqb0: 1.0.1-1
lvm2: 2.02.168-pve6
lxc-pve: 3.0.0-3
lxcfs: 3.0.0-1
novnc-pve: 0.6-4
proxmox-widget-toolkit: 1.0-18
pve-cluster: 5.0-27
pve-container: 2.0-23
pve-docs: 5.2-3
pve-firewall: 3.0-8
pve-firmware: 2.0-4
pve-ha-manager: 2.0-5
pve-i18n: 1.0-5
pve-libspice-server1: 0.12.8-3
pve-qemu-kvm: 2.11.1-5
pve-xtermjs: 1.0-5
qemu-server: 5.0-26
smartmontools: 6.5+svn4324-1
spiceterm: 3.0-5
vncterm: 1.5-3
zfsutils-linux: 0.7.8-pve1~bpo9
