backup-begin

[Peter Krempa]

On Tue, Apr 04, 2023 at 16:28:18 +0200, André Malm wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> For some vms the virsh backup-begin sometimes shuts off the vm and returns
> "error: operation failed: domain is not running" although it was clearly in
> state running (or paused).
> 
> Is the idea that you should guest-fsfreeze-freeze / virsh suspend before
> virsh backup-begin? I have tried with both with the same results.

Freezing the guest filesystems is a good idea to increase the data
consistency of the backup, but is not necessary. Nor it should have any
influence on the lifecycle of the VM.

> What could be causing the machine to shut off?

The VM most likely crashed, or was turned off in a different way.

Try running

 virsh domstate --reason $VMNAME

to see what the reason for the current state is.