[Solved] Intermittent startup hang Ubuntu 18.04

[asottile]

The symptoms are nearly identical to viewtopic.php?f=3&t=87978 (can't post links since this is a fresh account ) however installing / reinstalling guest additions have not fixed the problem for me.

I've reproduced this on both a Windows Host (the logs which are attached) and a macos host (sorry, work laptop so I'd have to jump through some hoops to get those logs).

The guest is essentially fresh, all I've done is install updates, a handful of packages, and the guest additions. Hardware acceleration is disabled, I have only given the VM two of my four CPUs and I have plenty of RAM headroom (I've given the VM 4GB of the 16GB on the host). I've tried several configurations of the video memory (suggested in another thread) without improvements.

The guest setup on the macos host is identical, though the CPU count is different (I have only assigned one cpu there).

I'm running Version 5.2.12 r122591 (Qt5.6.2)

For me, this is reproducible about 50% of boots. The startup sequence eventually reaches this point and hangs

I've attached a screenshot of what it looks like during hang as well as the VBox.log file -- let me know if anything else would be useful!

(After reaching this state, I usually ACPI shutdown and try again until successful)

frozen.png (24.05 KiB) Viewed 2136 times

[andyp73]

00:00:03.101358   VRamSize         <integer> = 0x0000000001000000 (16 777 216, 16 MB)

It may not help with your problem but you should set this to the maximum value as you have plenty of host memory to spare. You may also want to enable 3D support and see if that improves things.

00:00:04.134761 CPUM: Physical host cores: 2
00:00:03.101149   NumCPUs           <integer> = 0x0000000000000002 (2)

Your Intel i7-7500U has two physical cores and you have assigned them both to the guest. This may lead to resource starvation and a degradation in performance of the host. Set the guest to 1 CPU.

-Andy.

[socratis]

For future reference, you should completely shut down the VM before grabbing the VBox.log. Then ZIP it before attaching it to your response.

Hardware acceleration is disabled

What do you mean? 3D acceleration perhaps? You could enable it, I don't see any reason why you'd want that disabled...

[asottile]

For future reference, you should completely shut down the VM before grabbing the VBox.log. Then ZIP it before attaching it to your response.

Ah gotcha, in this case where it hangs should this be done via ACPI shutdown?

Hardware acceleration is disabled

What do you mean? 3D acceleration perhaps? You could enable it, I don't see any reason why you'd want that disabled...

Yes this is what I meant, sorry I was not clear! I was reading in another thread that disabling it potentially fixes this issue -- I also have another ubuntu-flavored VM which is working great with it disabled as well.

Enabling 3D Acceleration and I've rebooted a few times now and haven't been able to reproduce the hang -- I'm pretty surprised that would "fix" it but I guess fixed? (on my work laptop now, I'll check my other machine when I return home)

[socratis]

Ah gotcha, in this case where it hangs should this be done via ACPI shutdown?

ACPI or not, just make sure that the VM is shutdown. Close the VM window if it doesn't respond...

Enabling 3D Acceleration ... that would "fix" it but I guess fixed?

Was the 3D acceleration the only thing that you changed? You didn't change the VRAM? I would have thought that the limited amount of VRAM (16 MB) was "more responsible" for the hanging...

[asottile]

Enabling 3D Acceleration ... that would "fix" it but I guess fixed?

Was the 3D acceleration the only thing that you changed? You didn't change the VRAM? I would have thought that the limited amount of VRAM (16 MB) was "more responsible" for the hanging...

I first adjusted the VRAM which seemed to not make a difference. Then after that I enabled 3D acceleration and I was able to boot ~5 times in a row without issue (tried to science it as much as possible, then I disabled 3D acceleration and was able to reproduce the hang again).

[socratis]

Then after that I enabled 3D acceleration and I was able to boot ~5 times in a row without issue

Great, thanks for the feedback. Although it's a little bit unexpected, I'm marking as [Solved].