How to forcefully shutdown a guest VM using virsh command on Linux KVM

I

used the command ‘virsh shutdown vm1’ to shut down a guest named vm1 using the virsh command. However, it is still running, and my vm1 is not responding to an ssh session. Is there is a way to forcefully stop or kill a guest VM using the virsh command from host server?

 

You can alway force a guest domain/VM to stop with the virsh command. This command does an immediate ungraceful shutdown of VM. Let us see how to force a guest to stop and risk associated with it on Linux KVM.

How to shut down a guest vm gracefully

The syntax is:

# virsh shutdown domain

# virsh shutdown vm

# virsh shutdown freebsd

# virsh shutdown ubuntu1

How to shut down a guest vm immediately (forceful shutdown)

The syntax is:

# virsh destroy domain

# virsh destroy vm

# virsh destroy freebsd

# virsh destroy ubuntu1

 

Sample sessin:

Fig.01: Virsh command for forcing a guest to stop

 

The above command works but it can also corrupt guest file system but leave its resources intact. Hence I recommend to backup your VM everyday or at least backup important files including database.