The libvirt API has this to say regarding the shutdown command: virDomainShutdown: Shutdown a domain, the domain object is still usable there after but the domain OS is being stopped. Note that the guest OS may ignore the request. It is likely a guest OS issue. Which guest are you running? I had problems shutting down Windows guests, I had to resort to Destroy too in order to make sure the guest effectively guests shut down. <div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 12:37 PM, <<a href="mailto:paul.worner@thomsonreuters.com">paul.worner@thomsonreuters.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"> Hi For some reason recent libvirt code (0.8.3 and even before) the 'virsh shutdown <domain> ' is not effective . It issues an ok message but the domians remains in a runnning state . Only th e destroy works fine. Any idea ? thanks Zvi Dubitzky <a href="mailto:Email%3Adubi@il.ibm.com">Email:dubi@il.ibm.com</a> Hi Zvi, I had to install acpid on ubuntu in order to shutdown via virsh. Paul _______________________________________________ libvirt-users mailing list <a href="mailto:libvirt-users@redhat.com">libvirt-users@redhat.com</a> <a href="https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/libvirt-users" target="_blank">https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/libvirt-users</a> </blockquote></div>