2 minute freeze on power up before booting

Discussions about using Linux guests in VirtualBox.
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phankins11
Posts: 4
Joined: 26. Oct 2021, 23:55

2 minute freeze on power up before booting

Post by phankins11 »

Running vbox on CentOS 7. Just updated Virtual box today to VirtualBox-6.1-6.1.18_142142_el7-1.x86_64.

Created a brand new Ubuntu 20.04 Guest VM using SATA controller and a 150 GB vdi disk for the OS. 2 GB RAM and not much else for customization. This is typically how I build all my vms, only difference here is that the OS is Ubuntu. Up till now I've been mainly working with CentOS 7.

Taking all the defaults for the Server install. From the get go, any boot or reboot and this VM sits and hangs for 2 minutes (I don't even see the boot menu) before anything happens on screen. The HDD icon at the bottom right of the console screen shows a solid green light, no flashing, blinking or anything just solid green. I've also detached the optical drive because I found a blog post saying that his 2 minute boot up freeze was from an empty optical drive being attached to the VM, but that didn't seem to help at all.

Any ideas?
scottgus1
Site Moderator
Posts: 20965
Joined: 30. Dec 2009, 20:14
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Windows, Linux

Re: 2 minute freeze on power up before booting

Post by scottgus1 »

Start the VM from full normal shutdown, not save-state. Run until you see the problem happen, then shut down the VM from within the VM's OS if possible. If not possible, close the Virtualbox window for the VM with the Power Off option set.

Right-click the VM in the main Virtualbox window's VM list, choose Show Log. Save the far left tab's log, zip it, and post the zip file, using the forum's Upload Attachment tab.
phankins11
Posts: 4
Joined: 26. Oct 2021, 23:55

Re: 2 minute freeze on power up before booting

Post by phankins11 »

@scottgus1,

Thanks so much for the willingness to help. You should find the uploaded zipped up log and a screen shot of what I see during the long pause.

Couple of things to note...
1. This time on the start up I did see the boot menu, so was able to hit enter instead of waiting the 30 second countdown. So instead of about a 2 minute pause in the start of the VM there was about a 1 minute 39 second pause.

2. Instead of just saving off the log, I actually removed the previous VBox.log, then at the command prompt from the Logs directory of the VM I ran "tail -F VBox.log" and then powered on the VM. This way I could see the log and determine where the pause begins.

So after I powered off the VM, I actually edited the log and placed a line at line 1155 that reads "Between here is the long pause as seen in the time stamps.... " This should be obvious as to what I mean, but as I watched the log unfold during the power up, it literally sat at a black screen between lines 1153 and 1157 as is indicated by the time stamps. I hope this helps. I also added a screen capture of what I see during the pause as well.

BTW I've looked through the log briefly, but it makes my eyes bleed LOL... Hopefully someone more knowledgeable in this troubleshooting can find some clues.

I did notice one thing on line 1122 of the log, "00:00:02.006235 VMSVGA3d: unsupported OpenGL version; minimum is 3.0" not sure if this is an issue or not.

Again, thanks for the help!
Attachments
VBox.zip
VM log and Screenshot
(42.35 KiB) Downloaded 7 times
fth0
Volunteer
Posts: 5668
Joined: 14. Feb 2019, 03:06
Primary OS: Mac OS X other
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Linux, Windows 10, ...
Location: Germany

Re: 2 minute freeze on power up before booting

Post by fth0 »

Your host CPU "Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E7500 @ 2.93GHz" is from 2009 and doesn't provide SLAT/EPT, so VMs are generally expected to be very slow (e.g. by a factor of 10). I've regularly seen Linux guests taking 2 or 3 minutes to boot, so this isn't unusual, taken on its own.

Do your other VMs run on the same host? If yes, how fast do they start, and is the (virtual) HDD LED also constantly on then?

Another possible source of problems are modern file systems (e.g. btrfs, zfs, xfs), because they sometimes reorganize themselves and completely block the disk access in the meantime. On a slow CPU ...
phankins11
Posts: 4
Joined: 26. Oct 2021, 23:55

Re: 2 minute freeze on power up before booting

Post by phankins11 »

fth0 wrote:Your host CPU "Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E7500 @ 2.93GHz" is from 2009 and doesn't provide SLAT/EPT, so VMs are generally expected to be very slow (e.g. by a factor of 10). I've regularly seen Linux guests taking 2 or 3 minutes to boot, so this isn't unusual, taken on its own.

Do your other VMs run on the same host? If yes, how fast do they start, and is the (virtual) HDD LED also constantly on then?

Another possible source of problems are modern file systems (e.g. btrfs, zfs, xfs), because they sometimes reorganize themselves and completely block the disk access in the meantime. On a slow CPU ...
So keep in mind, I'm not saying the VM is slow.... The VM powers up, shows the boot menu. Once the default boot option is selected, either manually or default timeout, then the VM just hangs for about 1 minute and 45 seconds. nothing occurs on screen or even in the log during this "pause" then the system starts booting and is sufficiently fast enough for me. All my other VMs on this system do not experience this boot pause, but they are all CentOS 7.
fth0
Volunteer
Posts: 5668
Joined: 14. Feb 2019, 03:06
Primary OS: Mac OS X other
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Linux, Windows 10, ...
Location: Germany

Re: 2 minute freeze on power up before booting

Post by fth0 »

Since the VM (and also the host OS, of course) are already running at the time of the "pause", and the VBox.log doesn't show any additional indication of the problem (at least not to me), I'd suggest to try and use the means of the guest OS and the host OS to analyze further.

Did you check /var/log/syslog in the guest OS and the corresponding log in the host OS?
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