Troubleshooting help with VBOXADD.SERVICE?

[appyface]

I have newly created Linux Mint 20 Xfce 64-bit guest installed on version 6.1.14 (and using GA from 6.1.14 extension pack), and it boots very slowly - about 3 minutes.

systemd-analyze blame gives the first item: 1min 15.249s vboxadd.service

This service is for the guest additions...?

The guest additions are working well (bidirectional clipboard, shared folders, mouse integration, screen resolution resize).

I am not familiar with linux - this guest is so I can learn - and I'm lost as to why vboxadd.service is taking so long to start up? Days of googling has not yielded anything useful so far. I found a few posts here and also on Linux Mint forums but none have helped this.

Any help and info to troubleshoot and resolve this is appreciated. Kind regards.




TLDR;

More details, in case useful:

Running version 6.1.14 on Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit host, with 6.1.14 extension pack installed. I only run one VM at a time on this host as it is older hardware. Box is used for nothing else except VMs. Core2Duo E6850 3ghz, ICH9 chipset, 256MB radeon HD graphics card, 8G ram, plenty of sata disk space.

I have several older windows guests on this system (XP, Win7, Win8.1), all upgraded to the 6.1.14 version of guest additions. All use shared clipboard, shared folders, mouse integration just like the linux guest and all are working fine too. These still boot very fast, well under a minute, usually around 30 seconds.

Primary disk is same size for all VMs including linux: Fixed size 20G virutal disk (vmdk). I tried a new linux mint guest on a dynamic 20G disk to see if that made a difference, it did not.

The linux VM is using VMSVGA with 3D acceleration marked (I have also tried VboxSVGA and VMSVGA without 3D marked). 128MB graphics, 3G of memory, 4G swap FILE, 1 CPU, PS/2 mouse, IDE optical and SATA disk controllers. Using PIIX3 chipset though I also tried ICH9 with no change.

USB, audio are not marked in the linux guest.

(Host-only networking, USB, and python are not installed from Virtualbox installer, I have not installed them in all prior versions going back many years).

I think I have the defaults on most everything else in the linux guest VM. Made sure I selected linux 64-bit during VM create.

[fth0]

00:00:37.822160 VMMDev: Guest Additions capability report: (0x1 -> 0x5) seamless: yes, hostWindowMapping: no, graphics: yes

What you're reporting seems ok to me for an old Intel CPU. Search the VBox.log files of your various VMs for a line like the one above. The time stamp indicates round about when the GA have finished initializing.

[appyface]

Thank you for your reply.

This is from one of the XP guests. The others are similar.
00:00:11.666547 VMMDev: Guest Additions information report: Version 6.1.14 r140239 '6.1.14'
00:00:11.666598 VMMDev: Guest Additions information report: Interface = 0x00010004 osType = 0x00033000 (Windows XP, 32-bit)
00:00:11.666715 VMMDev: Guest Additions capability report: (0x0 -> 0x0) seamless: no, hostWindowMapping: no, graphics: no

These windows VMs boot all the way to login screen in around 30 seconds and run very well on this old bones hardware. The linux guest boots to login in around 3 minutes, with over 1 minute allocated to VBOXADD.SERVICE. It runs fine once up.

I am creating another Linux Mint 20 Xfce VM from scratch this weekend, and see if I end up with the same slow boot result. The LiveCD boots very quick, less than 20 seconds. I'll report back once installed and guest additions added again.

[fth0]

I meant a later version of this log message, where it says graphics: yes in the end, because then the VirtualBox graphics driver has really finished initializing. But I don't have a Windows XP guest, so I don't know what log messages appear with the older VirtualBox graphics driver used for Windows XP. If you post a zipped VBox.log file, I'd have a look.

[appyface]

I apologize for delay coming back here, I have run out of time and won't be pursuing a Linux mint guest for now, I've deleted it. I hope I will have time again sometime in future to try this again.

Thank you to all for your assistance. Kind regards.