Background:

The following error occurred while cloning a virtual machine in PVE:  

`can’t lock file ‘/var/lock/qemu-server/lock-xxx.conf’ – got timeout`  

Solution:

The issue can typically be resolved by unlocking the file after navigating to the directory:  

cd /var/lock/qemu-server  

qm unlock 100  

After this, you should be able to restart the virtual machine successfully.  

Additional Method:  

Based on related online resources, some users reported that the above solution did not work for them. They suggested the following steps, which are recorded here for reference:  

First, navigate to the directory, delete the lock file, and then stop the VM to resolve the issue:  

cd /var/lock/qemu-server  

rm -rf lock-111.conf  

qm stop 111