Discuss the VirtualBox 6.1.36 release here.

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phild
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Re: Discuss the VirtualBox 6.1.36 release here.

Post by phild »

Have backed out of 6.1.36 and reverted back to 6.1.34 with linux kernel 5.17.11 on the host and the Fedora 35 Server again is operational.
fth0
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Re: Discuss the VirtualBox 6.1.36 release here.

Post by fth0 »

robpats wrote:I wonder if this is the intended way of signing for compatibility or there are some bugs in the signing procedures.
Perhaps the "or" should be replaced by an "and". ;)

Seriously, the changes were made deliberately, but there could be bugs nonetheless.
robpats wrote:Its integrity cannot be verified on Windows 7 and XP as well.
AFAIK, on a Windows XP host you can circumvent the certificate check, and on a Windows 7 host you can and should install SHA-2 support anyway.
deckrider
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Re: Discuss the VirtualBox 6.1.36 release here.

Post by deckrider »

I wanted to give thanks for the 6.1.36 release. It has finally allowed me to move to a later version than 6.1.26. My setup is latest Ubuntu LTS guest on Windows 10 (21H2) host (both 64 bit)
phild
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Re: Discuss the VirtualBox 6.1.36 release here.

Post by phild »

Doing some further testing has identified a potential problem area. I restored a backup copy of the VM (Fedora 35 server no GUI) on an older machine. The software on the older machine is VB 6.1.36 and kernel 5.18.13. I expected to have the same problem as on the prod machine but the VM booted up. The major difference between the two machines is that the older machine is using a NVIDIA graphics adapter and the prod machine is using an INTEL graphics adapter.
TomRBerg
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Virtual Box releases after 6.1.30 - VBoxManager/UI doesn't start and leaks memory

Post by TomRBerg »

Hi,
I have the following setup:
- Windows 11 Pro x64
- NAS networked mapped drive K:\ (I am aware that transient network issues could cause problems but my vbox vms don't contain anything of value, and 6.1.30 is happy with it).
- Virtual Box 6.1.30 - works

Upgrading to VBox 6.1.36 today was no fun. After setup Vbox GUI opened and said all the VMs was inaccessible.
Closing Vbox, and trying to open it again the VBox GUI never appears. However, it shows as a process in Task Manager and begins to rapidly eat RAM. I did not notice this right away and when I returned to my PC I saw it had eaten 36Gb of RAM and increasing, then my PC froze. This is the behaviour it shows after this as well and I have to manually end all processes in Task manager.

I tried 6.1.37 pre-prelease with the same behaviour. I also get the behaviour in 6.1.34a.

Revering to 6.1.30 again all my VMs appear as they should and they function properly.
Any log files I can attach to illustrate the issue? Or should I file a bug?
TomRBerg
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Re: Discuss the VirtualBox 6.1.36 release here.

Post by TomRBerg »

I am running into an issue where VBox 6.1.36 for Windows refuse to open any of my VMs if I let it start at the final screen of setup. After setup completes, VBox won't start at all, instead the GUI process happily eat away all my RAM until my PC freeze up.

Posted about it in the Windows host forum before I saw this thread. I haven't been a member long enough to add links it seems. Sorry for the inconvenience.
mpack
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Re: Discuss the VirtualBox 6.1.36 release here.

Post by mpack »

I already merged your earlier post.

You may also want to review this earlier topic to see if it describes your case: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=106573.
fth0
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Re: Discuss the VirtualBox 6.1.36 release here.

Post by fth0 »

TomRBerg wrote:I tried 6.1.37 pre-prelease with the same behaviour. I also get the behaviour in 6.1.34a.
Hmmm, that's strange. The behavior in VirtualBox 6.1.36 was investigated, a fix for the memory eating part is part of VirtualBox 6.1.37r152565, and additional fixes regarding the Recording settings are part of VirtualBox 6.1.37r152627.

Which VirtualBox process had the big appetite?

Did you reboot the host after installing the other VirtualBox versions?
TomRBerg
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Re: Discuss the VirtualBox 6.1.36 release here.

Post by TomRBerg »

fth0 wrote:
TomRBerg wrote:I tried 6.1.37 pre-prelease with the same behaviour. I also get the behaviour in 6.1.34a.
Hmmm, that's strange. The behavior in VirtualBox 6.1.36 was investigated, a fix for the memory eating part is part of VirtualBox 6.1.37r152565, and additional fixes regarding the Recording settings are part of VirtualBox 6.1.37r152627.
fth0 wrote:Which VirtualBox process had the big appetite?
Virtualbox Manager
Did you reboot the host after installing the other VirtualBox versions?
I rebooted before encountering the original problem. I may not have rebooted for all other installation tests, but that also includes the 6.1.30 version that does not exhibit the problem.
I'll try to find time to update and reboot again and see if the problem reoccur.
TomRBerg
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Re: Discuss the VirtualBox 6.1.36 release here.

Post by TomRBerg »

fth0 wrote:
TomRBerg wrote:I tried 6.1.37 pre-prelease with the same behaviour. I also get the behavior in 6.1.34a.
Hmmm, that's strange. The behavior in VirtualBox 6.1.36 was investigated, a fix for the memory eating part is part of VirtualBox 6.1.37r152565, and additional fixes regarding the Recording settings are part of VirtualBox 6.1.37r152627.
I tried this again now. I also collected all my findings in this OneDrive folder structure: https://1drv.ms/u/s!Am6IgjaKUcqGh9wIL19 ... g?e=zzs038
tl;dr I seem to have the following issues:
  • The problem that mpack and you pointed to above (viewtopic.php?p=521575#p521575) affected me as well. I have VMs with snapshots. Deleting all snapshots in all VMs made 6.1.36 work.
  • During setup, in 6.1.36, if I let setup open Virtualbox at the end of setup, it says all my VMs are inaccessible. Now I believe this may be a problem with the way the setup routine launches Vbox at the end of setup. In 6.1.30 VboxManager sees my VMs when launched by setup. In 6.1.36 it does not. I have not tried all previous builds to see where this occurred but I have tried 6.1.34a and it has the same issue as 6.1.36. Launching Vbox after reboot shows the VMs (see the previous point), so I am wondering if it's a Windows UAC issue where the installer doesn't see my network share properly.
  • 6.1.37 does not install on my PC. It fails with what appears to be driver installation issues. I have captured screenshots and logs (see above URL).
My setup:
  • I have Windows 11 x64 Pro on an AMD Ryzen 3700x with 48Gb RAM and mapped network drives from a Synology NAS where the VMs are stored. This has worked up to and including VirtualBox-6.1.30-148432.
  • I am not using Hyper-V, I do not have Hyper-V, VM Platform, HyperVisor Platform, Windows Sandbox or WSL 2 enabled (I double checked)
  • I have vmware workstation 16 installed but I have explicitly made sure not to use it at the same time as Vbox
Which VirtualBox process had the big appetite?
It was the "Virtualbox Interface ("VboxSVC.exe -Embedding") | Screenshot in the 63136 folder. It eats up all RAM until the PC gets responsive. The virtualbox UI never appear on the screen.
I cannot ever recall having used the screen recording feature meantioned in mpacks thread, though it is of course possible I may have ages ago. I have been trying to think of what Vbox version I was on when I setup Vbox on this PC the first time in 2019, but I thought it would be some R6 version. The oldest EXE file in my download folder was 6.1.10, and I cannot remember having imported any VMs from anywhere else, but its possible I may have.
Did you reboot the host after installing the other VirtualBox versions?
Yes, tried with and without reboots.

My Vbox problems:
  • I can always successfully use and start VMs when VirtualBox-6.1.30-148432-Win is installed, even without rebooting between vbox installs (tried with and without).
  • I cannot recall having used the Recording feature in any VM, but otherwise I am seeing the same problems as reported in that thread with the memory of my PC being eaten very rapidy. I have 48Gb RAM and it seemed to me like it started at 13Gb and ate memory in chunks of almost 1Gb a second, so I have to really quickly kill it using task manager.
  • I have VMs with snapshots. See my summary of that below.
  • VBox opens its GUI if you don't uncheck the checkbox at the end of the installation, but any build post 6.1.30 claims none of my VMs can be read (screenshot in the 6.1.36 folder).
  • On any subsequent launch after setup, or after the reboot, you get the memory eating problem in 6.1.36.
So I downloaded and installed VirtualBox-6.1.37-152741-Win and tried again.
  • Installing 6.1.37 over 6.1.36, the setup seems to complete the "copying files" phase of the installation, then it says rollback and fails. This happened in both VirtualBox-6.1.37-152627-Win and VirtualBox-6.1.37-152741-Win.
  • The previous Vbox installation got nuked by this installation. It disappeared from add/remove programs and all files in the "C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox" folder was deleted except for the ExtentionPacks subfolder.
  • Ran the installer again with the logging parameters https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/MSI_Logging | Logs and screenshot: https://1drv.ms/u/s!Am6IgjaKUcqGh9wM8r- ... Q?e=7qVdcv - it looked like a driver problem, so I rebooted and ran the installer again
  • Same error. Something seems to go wrong with driver installs. Abandoned 6.1.37. MSI logs from both attempts in the 6137 folder.
Then I decided to look into the snapshot issue. I did...
  • a complete backup of my Vbox VM folder and
  • installed VirtualBox-6.1.30-148432-Win.exe. It installed without problems. I let Vbox start after the installation.
  • Went through each VM and deleted all snapshots
  • Upgraded to VirtualBox-6.1.36-152435-Win (as 6.1.37 refuse to install) again and let Vbox open itself at the end of the installation (without reboot)
  • Vbox 6.1.36 again says all VMs are inaccessible (screenshots in https://1drv.ms/u/s!Am6IgjaKUcqGh9wLWav ... A?e=vL7gy1)
  • Rebooted my PC
  • Started Vbox and it appeared on the screen and showed all my VMs. I tried starting and shutting down a VM and it worked without problems.
I actually would like to keep some of my snapshots, so I tried what was suggested in mpacks thread and wiped the Vbox VM folder and then began importing VMs to see if it would choke on any of them. Several of my VMs with snapshots caused the memory leak, but many VMs with snapshots imported fine. I also started and stopped VMs with snapshots that worked.
TomRBerg
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Re: Discuss the VirtualBox 6.1.36 release here.

Post by TomRBerg »

Btw is there some way to manually fix a VM with snapshots that refuse to start without installing 6.1.37? These VM cause the runaway memory issue upon import (which effectively fails).
fth0
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Re: Discuss the VirtualBox 6.1.36 release here.

Post by fth0 »

TomRBerg wrote:Btw is there some way to manually fix a VM with snapshots that refuse to start without installing 6.1.37?
Yes. Ensure that no VirtualBox process is running (e.g. reboot the host). Search all .vbox files for all occurrences of <VideoCapture enabled="false" screens="18446744073709551615" [...]/> and replace the value of the screens attribute by "1".

To install a VirtualBox 6.1.37 test build, open a Command Prompt with normal user privileges, navigate to the downloads folder and run the installation with the following commands:

Code: Select all

cd Downloads
VirtualBox-6.1.37-152741-Win.exe --logging --msi-log-file VBoxInstallLog.txt --force-install-timestamp-ca
mpack
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Re: Discuss the VirtualBox 6.1.36 release here.

Post by mpack »

TomRBerg wrote:Btw is there some way to manually fix a VM with snapshots that refuse to start without installing 6.1.37?
One could always delete all the snapshots? Experienced users avoid them anyway, they have almost no useful function.
TomRBerg
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Re: Discuss the VirtualBox 6.1.36 release here.

Post by TomRBerg »

mpack wrote:
TomRBerg wrote:Btw is there some way to manually fix a VM with snapshots that refuse to start without installing 6.1.37?
One could always delete all the snapshots? Experienced users avoid them anyway, they have almost no useful function.
For continuous use or production, I would agree that snapshots are a headache. But I have used them in labbing to return to a previous point quickly and so when testing things, especially in some older legacy systems like NT 3.x or Win 3.x, Win9x series where the OS is somewhat fragile and you quickly end up in a situation where the OS becomes a mess.

That said, I would survive a situation where I would have had to recreate snapshots, but if it was at all possible to save them, I prefer it :lol:
And with your and fth0s help I blanked out the VM list, upgraded successfully, restored my backup, edited the vbox files (modified the screen line), and was able to import all my VMs intact with snapshots and tested that they indeed are working. So thank you :D
fth0
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Re: Discuss the VirtualBox 6.1.36 release here.

Post by fth0 »

You're welcome, and thanks for reporting back! :)
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