Obtaining the state (shut down, running, etc.) of each qube in text form

In the State column of the Qube Manager, I sometimes see a green bubble (which I assume means running), but sometimes a yellow bubble (what does this mean? and how do I fix it?), and there seems to be another section of the column having to do with updates that has different arrows pointing in different directions.
Are there more than 2 sections of this column? Is there a way to get the same information in the terminal, or with words instead of confusing arrows and bubbles?

(Note that a good enhancement might be to hover over the symbols to find out what they mean, but this requires a mouse and I would rather use a keyboard)

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For the various arrows, hover text explains what they mean.

I think yellow bubble means the qube is starting or stopping. If it is like this for a long time, you can right click > kill qube.

Also note that there is grey which I think is paused. We should really document these all in one place, and also throw a bone to the colorblind folks (even for me the grey was hard to distinguish) and have a terminal version that uses words.

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But then this happens!

From my personal documentation:
Yellow Qubes Mananger = hung
Solution (right click not consistent, follow bash instructions):

Only if you understand

qvm-kill --force --verbose [zombieVM]

In other words zombieVM == ‘yellow’ VM

Qubes Manager (as with Qubes updater) does not ‘live’ refresh. IN other words, Qubes Manager lies to you after you’ve opened the window (if there are errors, and there are currently some errors on 4.1R at-least). You can close the Qube Manager and open again, but again Qube Manager is being developed alot, so best thing is to use terminal if you understand what you are doing. (–verbose == show me what is happening).

Hope that helped.

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I seek to understand before I run that.

  1. I assume qvm-shutdown is the equivalent of the gui option Shutdown.
  2. I assume qvm-kill is the equivalent of the gui option Kill, which is also what happens when it tries to shutdown for 20 seconds, and you click the Kill it! button.
  3. What is the difference between qvm-kill and qvm-kill --force? I thought kill was already forcing it to turn off…
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Is this in reference to your windows vm? It’s a problem I recently had to work around here Win10 HVM qrexec fails to connect - #3 by joe.blough

This isn’t quite right, I think. The “yellow” denotes that qrexec is not
connected - you can see this in many HVMs without Qubes support.
In the ordinary case it may show that a template based qube has hung,
or needs more time, but it does not necessarily denote a zombie.

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@joe.blough,
If you want to help with my Windows vm problems, you can head over here, but please note I use a standalone and no windows template:

This current thread is for defining the colors that appear in the State column. I think we have most of them but if there are any devs who work on the Manager (@unman ?) that want to correct this, please do and I will edit it.
Summary of colors we have figured out:

  • Green: Running (specifically qrexec is connected?)
  • Grey: Paused
  • Yellow: Transient (qrexec is not connected)

Manager isnt my thing, but I think a better summary for most cases:
Green: Running
Grey: Paused
Yellow: Transient

What do you use instead? Please, I want an alternative!

You don’t need --force, that’s an option for the qvm-shutdown command.

I should have probably put in bold personal documentation. I only wrote that info to deal with a zombie. If I’m not seeing yellow for a prolonged period then that doc isn’t relevant anyway.

Command line and scripted.

I finally found the alternative I wanted, but I had to do it on my own. What I was asking for was:

qvm-ls

which gives the states in text form

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Update the title to best reflect that.