If I have libvirt/qemu/kvm startup my Windows VM for me when I boot into Linux, what happens when I shutdown? Does libvirt/qemu/kvm send the Windows VM the shutdown signal, Windows dutifully obliges, systemd gives it 1m30s to do so but Windows decides to do an update and Linux kills it half way through. Is that how it works?

Or should I just not start a WIN10 VM at boot in Linux because of these reasons?

It’s late there’s not enough time for me to duckduckgo !g this.

sirromj wrote:

<span style=”font-size: 0.8rem;”>Or should I just not start a WIN10 VM at boot in Linux because of these reasons?</span>

You shouldn’t rely on it shutting down safely for those reasons. Running VMs on machines which reboot themselves is dodgy for this reason. I’m not sure exactly what happens with the system you mention though – I’ve used it to run VMs quite a lot, but only for throwaway ones which just got reverted to the last snapshot when powered off (auto updates were also turned off on them). Though if it’s you shutting down manually surely you just manually shutdown the VM first?

Can’t you arrange for qemu to save the current state and then exit?

The first hit on ddg described this but I can’t link it here because new forum.

Airways used to work with virtual box.