Discuss the 6.1.0 release

[klaus]

VirtualBox 6.0 already dropped 32-bit host OS support officially (and you were just lucky that we didn't find time to enforce this for Windows host). It was forgotten in the changelog for 6.0.0, but it was reflected in the documentation... the website was also updated over a year ago to reflect the fact that there are only 64-bit packages.

[abcuser]

Hi,
today I have upgraded one of my old machines with dual monitor and after installing Guest Additions 6.1 secondary monitor does not accept any actions.

Old system
Ubuntu 14.04 LTS as virtual host
VirtualBox 4.3.38
Windows 7 as virtual guest

New current system
Upgraded Ubuntu 14.04 to Ubuntu 16.04 and immediately upgraded to Ubuntu 18.04.
Uninstalled virtualbox-4.3 deb package and downloaded virtualbox-6.1 deb package from official virtualbox.org web site. Installed the deb package without a problem.
Installed Oracle VirtualBox Extension pack 6.1.0.
Windows 7 started up without a problem still with VirtualBox Guest Additinos 4.3.38.

Now I installed VirtualBox Guest Additions 6.1.0 and restarted Windows.
After Windows restart I run into the problem.
My left monitor still works perfectly without a problem, but my right monitor there is mouse icon displayed as expected and if I move mouse, mouse is perfectly displayed, but what ever I do with mouse (click or click and drag...) has zero response e.g. click on min, max, close, what ever has zero effect. The most interesting is moving a window from left to right monitor. When I move the window slowly it slowly moves from left to right to exactly the point when mouse icon is switched from left to right monitor and in that moment window freezes - mouse does not take any action from the second monitor.

I copied log files from virtual machine at this time of the problem. See attachment.

I luckily created a snapshot before upgrading. Reverting Windows 7 guest to 4.3.38 Guest Additions and mouse is working perfectly again on second monitor.

[abcuser]

I have found small problems in 6.1.0. Actually I don't know if this problems are regressions from previous version or something older, because I migrated from virtualbox 4.3.8 to 6.1.0.

DELETING SNAPSHOTS:
- When deleting snapshot new progress bar dialog is displayed with 99% info all the time and "merging medium" text. This is not really helpful at all. In VirtualBox 4.3 there was progress bar at least somehow working and there was additionally estimated time to finish (time is gone, intentionally?)
- When deleting snapshot most of the icons are greyed out except "Clone", "Properties" and "Delete". Clicking on them nothing happens. It looks like they are disabled, but not greyed out.

DISK ENCRYPTION
- If virtual machine has a snapshot and enable General | Disk Encryption, virtual machine (Ubuntu 16.04) does not start anymore it reports error: "FATAL: No bootable medium found! System halted." But if remove encryption, then delete snapshot (this virtual machine has only one) and enable encryption VirtualBox asks for password to continue. It looks disk encryption is only supported without snapshosts. If this is true I suggest to grey-out General | Disk Encryption tab if snapshots exists.
- If virtual machine has no snapshots and encrypted disk used and "Headless Start" is selected, Show button is disabled, then enabled but virtual machine gets into Pause mode. If I un-pause it, just black screen appears. It looks like encrypted disk is not supported with "Headless Start" in GUI. It would be nice in this case to gray out (or remove) "Headless Start" option, or even better to offer input box to enter a password.

[scottgus1]

- If virtual machine has no snapshots and encrypted disk used and "Headless Start" is selected...It looks like encrypted disk is not supported with "Headless Start" in GUI

I remember playing with this scenario once. You can run an encrypted guest headless, you just need to provide the encryption password on the command line. See "vboxmanage controlvm <vmname> addencpassword". There's a typo in the manual, this is the command to insert the encryption password into a paused headless guest:

vboxmanage controlvm "vmname" addencpassword <id> -

Note the last minus sign, it's easy to miss: that asks you to type the password.

If virtual machine has a snapshot...It looks disk encryption is only supported without snapshosts

Encrypting images with differencing images is only possible if there are no snapshots or a linear chain of snapshots. This limitation may be addressed in a future Oracle VM VirtualBox version.

I suspect that if you encrypt the guest disk when there are no snapshots then make snapshots, the guest might run. Does your guest have a snapshot branch?

[klaus]

The issue with disk encryption and snapshots is genuine. It is fixed in VirtualBox 6.1.2. However, to state it up front: the Windows package of 6.1.2 has an annoying regression (all other platforms are unaffected), one cannot do any extpack install/remove/upgrade with it. The operation hangs endlessly (and can only be resolved by killing both VBoxExtPackHelper.exe processes e.g. using task manager). We'll replace the package in the next few hours I hope. The new one will have the revision 135663 in the package file name (on the about page it won't show any difference, it'll identify itself as 135662 like the broken one).