qm-monitor

Enter the QEMU Monitor interface of a specific virtual machine

$ qm monitor [vm_id]

qm monitor

    The ID of the virtual machine to connect to. This is a numerical identifier assigned to each VM within the Proxmox VE environment.

The `qm monitor` command in Proxmox Virtual Environment (PVE) provides an interactive monitor interface for a running guest virtual machine (VM). It establishes a connection to the QEMU process of the specified VM, allowing users to execute QEMU Monitor Protocol (QMP) commands directly. This interface enables advanced VM management, debugging, and monitoring capabilities beyond what is typically available through the Proxmox web interface or other higher-level tools. With `qm monitor`, you can perform actions such as querying VM status, controlling devices, migrating the VM, and even injecting faults for testing purposes. This is a crucial tool for administrators needing fine-grained control and deep insights into VM behavior.

Accessing the QEMU monitor allows you to issue commands specific to the underlying virtualization engine, circumventing the need to use high level promox interface or scripting. It is a powerful tool for low level debugging, direct hardware device manipulation and performance investigation.

The `qm monitor` command requires root privileges to execute. Incorrect use of QEMU Monitor Protocol commands can potentially destabilize or crash the VM. Advanced knowledge of QEMU and virtualization is recommended before using this command.

After executing `qm monitor `, you will enter a command-line interface. You can then type QMP commands and press Enter to execute them. Type 'help' inside the monitor to see the available commands. To exit the monitor, type 'quit' or press Ctrl+D.

Example of common use cases:
-info network - Display information about VM network interfaces.
-info pci - Display information on pci devices
-migrate - Used for VM migration between hypervisors

The `qm monitor` command is part of the Proxmox VE suite of tools. It was developed to provide a low-level interface to virtual machines. As Proxmox VE evolved, so did `qm monitor`, integrating more features and QEMU functionalities.

qm(1), qemu-system-x86_64(1)