How to quit the QEMU monitor when not using a GUI?

Question

I'm running QEMU on Linux without GUI.

After running starting my custom kernel with QEMU, I can't kill and return to host by pressing Ctrl+C.

Is there any way to get back to host OS?

Answer 1

Ctrl-A X

For -nographic just enter:

Ctrl-A X

which means

1. first press Ctrl + A (A is just key a, not the alt key),
2. then release the keys,
3. afterwards press X.

Alternatively:

• enter the QEMU monitor with Ctrl-A C then type:

  quit
  

  and press enter. See also: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14165158/how-to-switch-to-qemu-monitor-console-when-running-with-curses

• use the QEMU monitor (same as Ctrl-A C) with telnet:

  qemu-system-x86_64 -monitor telnet::45454,server,nowait -serial mon:stdio
  

  and on a host terminal:

  telnet localhost 45454
  

  and then quit from there.

  -serial mon:stdio is required to keep Ctrl+C working: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/49716931/how-to-run-qemu-with-nographic-and-monitor-but-still-be-able-to-send-ctrlc-to/49751144#49751144

• shut down the VM from guest normally, e.g. with a powerdown command from a Linux guest shell if you are able. This of course goes through the normal shutdown sequence instead of immediately killing the VM, but sometimes it is just the simplest approach.

  It does not work for all machines however: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31990487/how-to-cleanly-exit-qemu-after-executing-bare-metal-program-without-user-interve

Tested in Ubuntu 17.10, QEMU 2.10.1.

Answer 2

To close a QEMU process in your shell:

ctrl+a, then x

Answer 3

Press Cntl-Alt-2 and then use the close button on the menu.

You can find more useful shortcuts here

Answer 4

Ok, found a solution.

1. Opened new terminal session: ctrl+alt+f2
2. Used ps to find PID of previous tty: ps -fu
3. Killed previous tty: kill -HUP PID

Answer 5

This is just in addition to other answers, where ctrl-a x works but you've aliased over it. If you're like me, you're using tmux with ctrl-b replaced with ctrl-a, which is why you can't use ctrl-a x. A simple solution to this is to use tmux's send-keys utility to send ctrl-a x to qemu.

In a running tmux window, press ctrl-a : to bring up the tmux prompt, then type send-keys C-a x Enter and qemu will quit.