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Troubleshooting

Message What it means What to do
----- VMs with '…' NOT FOUND ----- No guest matches --vmid, or the account cannot see them Check the selection with a dry run; check VM.Audit (and Pool.Audit for @pool-…) in Permissions
POSSIBLE PROBLEM PERMISSION 'Datastore.Audit' No storage with guest disks was readable, so the storage check is skipped Grant Datastore.Audit on /storage
Skip VM problem storage space out of 95% A disk of the guest is on a storage used above --max-perc-storage Free space, or raise the threshold. The storage table at the top of the output shows Ko next to it
VM 100 consider enabling QEMU agent … The QEMU guest agent is off in the VM options Only a warning: the snapshot is taken. See Snapshot consistency
Skip VM is template Templates cannot have snapshots Nothing: templates are always skipped
Skip VM Proxmox VE cannot snapshot it, bind mount or device: mp0 A mount point or disk is a host path or a device, which Proxmox VE cannot snapshot Nothing, or move the data to a volume on a storage with snapshots. The run does not fail
Skip VM status unknown: node offline or not reachable The node of the guest does not answer Bring the node back; the run exits with 1
Skip VM '--only-running' parameter used! The guest is stopped and --only-running is set Nothing
Error task in run... increase the timeout! The snapshot or removal task was still running after --timeout seconds Raise --timeout. Proxmox VE keeps running the task, so the snapshot may appear (or be removed) anyway; the other old snapshots of that guest are left for the next run
Error in task: … Proxmox VE ran the task and it failed; the text is its exit status Look at the task log in the web UI (the guest’s Task History)
ERROR: Snapshot name '…' is not valid / … characters long The label has characters Proxmox VE refuses, or the name would be longer than 40 characters Use letters, digits, - and _; shorten the label or the timestamp format
ERROR: Timestamp format '…' The format writes timestamps of variable length, or does not sort in time order See The timestamp format
Script return code: N The hook script exited with N Check the script: the snapshot went on anyway
Unrecognized command or argument '…' An option is in the wrong place Global options go before the command: see Commands

A guest that fails does not stop the run: the others still get their snapshots, and the exit code is 1 at the end.

cv4pve-autosnap removes only the snapshots it recognises as its own: see How a snapshot is recognised. A snapshot whose description was edited, or taken with another --timestamp-format, is left alone: remove it from the web UI.

When the removal of a snapshot fails, the other old snapshots of that guest are left for the next run.

Two options, not listed in --help, show what the tool is doing. They work before or after the command:

OptionWhat it does
--debugOn an error, prints the exception type and stack trace after the ERROR: line.Also logs each Proxmox VE API call: method, URL, status and duration, and the parameters of calls that change data; passwords, tokens and tickets are masked.
--log-levelTrace, Debug, Information, Warning (default),Error or Critical; overrides --debug.Trace also logs the full API responses; they contain details of your cluster, so review the output before sharing it.

When you report a problem, attach the output of the failing command run with --debug.

With a hook script, --debug also prints the environment variables passed to the script and the command run.