QEMU/KVM/Libvirt Unable to make (internal) snapshots

Support Virtualization
1

Hi,

I’ve been using Manjaro (Cinnamon) for about a month now and last week I wanted to get a Windows 10 Virtual Machine up and running. With VirtualBox I got it working as intended, but I was recommended trying out QEMU/KVM + Virt-manager because of improved performance and less potential issues with future kernel upgrades.

I checked out the ArchWiki on Libvirt and Virt-manager and used the following terminal commands to install QEMU/KVM and Virt-manager:

sudo pamac install libvirt virt-manager qemu-desktop
sudo systemctl enable --now libvirtd.service
sudo usermod -a -G libvirt $USER

After this I’m able to run virt-manager and configure a new virtual machine.
However, if I try to create a new (internal) snapshot of the running machine I get the following error:

Error creating snapshot: Operation not supported: internal snapshots of a VM with pflash based firmware are not supported

After some searching I landed on this (older) libvirt issue:

‘Upgrading libvirt from 9.1.0 to 9.2.0 breaks creating a new internal snapshot’

Can anyone verify if this is still an ongoing issue with libvirt version 10.x? Is downgrading libvirt still the solution?

Thank you in advance.

2

Snapshots don’t work if you use UEFI.

3

That’s a serious limitation as basically all systems are uefi based these days.
As long this remains an issue with libvirt, I guess I’ll stick with VirtualBox that does snapshots fine with uefi based VM’s.

4

Well… :man_shrugging:

By the way, they work if you shutdown the VM.

5

Not VMs. The default for a VM in libvirt is still traditional bios.

6

If one wants to install Windows 11 - there is an annoying requirement of Secure Boot which implies EFI firmware.

7

It’s fine, I’ll keep an eye on future developments on QEMU/KVM and hope for proper snapshot support with UEFI.

For now I’ll stick to VirtualBox.

Thanks all

8

in case it was missed - it seemed that way to me …

Snapshots work fine - UEFI or not.
Just not from a currently running VM.
Not a problem when it is shut down.

9

I prefer qemu for my needs, and nothing is stopping you from using filesystem snapshots on live guests. Proxmox is also very popular.

Virtualbox is last on my list. Better GUI? I can’t think of any other benefits. Oracle has destroyed many things I used to love.

10

This issue ticket was created by me 1 year ago. This described that creating an offline snapshot did not work when VM was in offline mode. This issue was already fixed.
As far as I know, my issue ticket is not related to your problem here. I am pretty sure,VM with BIOS legacy (Non-UEFI) allows you to create an live snapshot.

I remember that there is a bug in VirtualBox when creating many live snapshots that could lead to data corruption detected by Btrfs inside VirtualBox .

In my opinion, creating a live snapshot is a bit of an exaggeration, as all the data processing from the virtual RAM is stored on a physical hard disk.
The creation of an offline snapshot is recommended for stability reasons.