Scheduling VM start and stop

pks schedule is the interactive superset of pks vm autoshutdown: the same idle and daily shutdown controls, plus daily auto-start, applied to one Azure VM in a single confirmed batch. It belongs to the VM family conceptually but is registered as a top-level command.

Note. The command is pks schedule, not pks vm schedule. Running it under the vm branch will not resolve.

Prerequisites

• An Azure VM. The wizard calls Azure Resource Manager directly with no provider-capability check. Pointing it at a Scaleway machine fails inside the Azure calls rather than declining gracefully.
• Azure authentication. Run pks azure init first.
• A reachable machine, for idle changes. The idle option is applied over SSH against the on-box systemd service.

1. Run the wizard

pks schedule

There are no arguments and no flags. Everything is prompted, so the command cannot be used in a script or a non-interactive session.

2. Pick the VM

The first prompt selects one machine from the tracked list.

3. Multi-select what to change

The wizard offers any combination of:

• Auto-start at a fixed daily time
• Auto-shutdown at a fixed daily time
• Idle shutdown after a number of minutes
• The matching "Disable" option for each of the three

4. Fill in the values and confirm

Each selected option prompts for its value. A summary panel then shows everything you chose before anything is applied.

5. Apply

Confirming applies all selected changes in one batch — Azure schedule writes for the start and stop times, an SSH-based systemd change for the idle threshold — and reports any per-item errors at the end.

Partial application is possible. A failure in one selected item does not roll back the items that already succeeded; the failures surface as warnings and the command exits with a non-zero status even when others applied cleanly.

6. Verify

pks vm status

The panel shows the idle and scheduled shutdown configuration for the machine.

7. Troubleshooting

See also

• Auto-shutdown for Azure VMs — the flag-driven, scriptable subset
• Start, stop, and destroy VMs — manual power control
• Inspect VMs with list and status — confirming applied settings
• pks vm — the full command group