qvm-shutdown on paused VMs behaves oddly

[3hhh]

Qubes OS version
4.0

Affected component(s) or functionality
qvm-shutdown

Brief summary
qvm-shutdown hangs for a while and then apparently kills paused VMs.

To Reproduce

qvm-run --dispvm surfing-dvm xterm
qvm-pause disp1234
qvm-shutdown --wait disp1234

Expected behavior
qvm-shutdown performs the shutdown. Possibly even gracefully (i.e. by unpausing the VM first).

Actual behavior
qvm-shutdown hangs for 10s or so. Then it apparently kills the VM.

Recommendation
From my point of view it would be sensible to handle paused VMs as follows:

qvm-shutdown: Unpause and shutdown gracefully as usual.
qvm-kill: Do not unpause, remove it from memory instantly (shouldn't take 10s).

Related, non-duplicate issues
#5967

[andrewdavidwong]

I can imagine that there might be a security concern here. If a VM was paused because it was doing something malicious, then I suppose unpausing it could be dangerous, even if only to shut it down. If that's the reason for the current behavior, perhaps the user should be prompted when attempting to a shut down a paused VM. Also, it may very well be that the user attempting the shutdown forgot that the VM was paused and would be grateful to be reminded.

[3hhh]

I can imagine that there might be a security concern here. If a VM was paused because it was doing something malicious, then I suppose unpausing it could be dangerous, even if only to shut it down. If that's the reason for the current behavior, perhaps the user should be prompted when attempting to a shut down a paused VM. Also, it may very well be that the user attempting the shutdown forgot that the VM was paused and would be grateful to be reminded.

That's what qvm-kill is for. Anyway this is not about the GUI in qubes-manager which allows to kill or unpause only anyway.

If a user manages to mistype qvm-shutdown vs qvm-kill I am reluctant to feel sorry. And if he forgot about that malicious paused VM, then apparently it wasn't so bad at all.

[andrewdavidwong]

That's what qvm-kill is for. Anyway this is not about the GUI in qubes-manager which allows to kill or unpause only anyway.

If a user manages to mistype qvm-shutdown vs qvm-kill I am reluctant to feel sorry.

The user not knowing the difference seems much more likely than a typo.

And if he forgot about that malicious paused VM, then apparently it wasn't so bad at all.

Oh, those were meant to be two separate examples.

[github-actions]

This issue is being closed because:

• This issue is on the "Release 4.0 updates" milestone.
• Qubes OS 4.0 reached EOL (end-of-life) over one year ago.
• There has not been any activity on this issue in over one year.

If anyone believes that this issue should be reopened and reassigned to an active milestone, please leave a brief comment.
(For example, if a bug still affects Qubes OS 4.1, then the comment "Affects 4.1" will suffice.)