canonical / canonical/multipass

After upgrade, one instance fails to start

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Description

**Describe the bug**

I upgraded multipass to 1.14.0-mac to make use of the --force option in multipass stop. I use a Macbook with MacOS Monterrey 12.6.
I have a total of 5 instances and one of them had hung and was unreachable so I had to use multipass stop --force to stop it. Now when I try to start it, I get this error:
start failed: The following errors occurred:
qemu-system-aarch64: -drive file=/var/root/Library/Application Support/multipassd/qemu/vault/instances/Thesis/ubuntu-22.04-server-cloudimg-arm64.img,if=none,format=qcow2,discard=unmap,id=hda: qcow2: Image is corrupt; cannot be opened read/write
Thesis: shutdown called while starting

I tried to cd into the directory to maybe inspect it myself, but I get this error: Library/Application Support/multipassd: No such file or directory ( I tried with sudo su as the root user as well)

My other instances seem to work fine, I tested 2 of the remaining and they powered on successfully.

**Expected behavior**
I want to know my opinions.. Recovery is the ideal case but if that doesn't work, unfortunately the instance I have a problem with has important data that I do not want to delete by deleting or removing the instance and making a new one. If I uninstall and reinstall multipass for example, do I lose the data?

**Logs**
I do not see the Multipass directory in the specified location:
Library/Logs % ls
Assistant Microsoft Teams Helper (Renderer)
Baseband SMSMigrator
DiagnosticReports ZoomPhone
DiscRecording.log com.apple.AMPLibraryAgent
Homebrew zoom.us
JetBrains

I cannot seem to find the logs, I can provide them if I can get any guidance here..

- `multipass info`
Name: primary
State: Stopped
Snapshots: 0
IPv4: --
Release: --
Image hash: f753d6f9cea8 (Ubuntu 22.04 LTS)
CPU(s): --
Load: --
Disk usage: --
Memory usage: --
Mounts: /Users/pratik => Home
UID map: 501:default
GID map: 20:default

Name: CBDP
State: Stopped
Snapshots: 0
IPv4: --
Release: --
Image hash: 5167c1b13cb3 (Ubuntu 22.04 LTS)
CPU(s): --
Load: --
Disk usage: --
Memory usage: --
Mounts: --

Name: GR
State: Stopped
Snapshots: 0
IPv4: --
Release: --
Image hash: 5167c1b13cb3 (Ubuntu 22.04 LTS)
CPU(s): --
Load: --
Disk usage: --
Memory usage: --
Mounts: --

Name: Praktikum
State: Stopped
Snapshots: 0
IPv4: --
Release: --
Image hash: 5167c1b13cb3 (Ubuntu 22.04 LTS)
CPU(s): --
Load: --
Disk usage: --
Memory usage: --
Mounts: --

Name: PratikUbuntu
State: Deleted
Snapshots: 0
IPv4: --
Release: --
Image hash: 4fd777cb9295 (Ubuntu 22.04 LTS)
CPU(s): --
Load: --
Disk usage: --
Memory usage: --
Mounts: --

Name: TUMThesis
State: Stopped
Snapshots: 0
IPv4: --
Release: --
Image hash: f6bf7305207a (Ubuntu 22.04 LTS)
CPU(s): --
Load: --
Disk usage: --
Memory usage: --
Mounts: --

Name: Thesis
State: Deleted
Snapshots: 0
IPv4: --
Release: --
Image hash: c841bac00925 (Ubuntu 24.04 LTS)
CPU(s): --
Load: --
Disk usage: --
Memory usage: --
Mounts: --

- `multipass get local.driver`
qemu

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start with the macOS QEMU instance-start path and reproduce the reported sequence using `multipass stop --force` followed by `multipass start Thesis`. Investigate how the qcow2 image error is surfaced and where Multipass stores its macOS instance data and logs. Done means determining whether the instance data can be recovered or preserved and documenting the supported recovery behavior.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
macos
Domain
infrastructure, operating-systems
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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