Old Centos guests won't start following VBox Upgrade

Discussions about using Linux guests in VirtualBox.
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SAPB
Posts: 4
Joined: 11. Sep 2018, 18:25

Old Centos guests won't start following VBox Upgrade

Post by SAPB »

I have several old centos guests that were created with an old V4.x version of Virtual Box. I can still start and run these successfully using Version 5.0.40 but following an upgrade to any 5.1.x or 5.2.x version they seem to hang during the power up sequence. If I revert back to 5.0.40 then they can be run as normal, so I'm pretty confident that I probably need to tweak the settings for newer virtual box versions. I can't see anything obvious in the logs, but to be fair I 'm not a frequent user of Virtual box so I don't really know what I should be looking for! The host machine is a Windows 7 box.

Could anyone kindly point me in the right direction?

Thanks,

Phil
mpack
Site Moderator
Posts: 39156
Joined: 4. Sep 2008, 17:09
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Mostly XP

Re: Old Centos guests won't start following VBox Upgrade

Post by mpack »

Please post a VM log file. With the VM fully shut down, right click and "Show Log" in the GUI, save "VBox.log" (no other file) to a zip, and attach the zip here.
SAPB
Posts: 4
Joined: 11. Sep 2018, 18:25

Re: Old Centos guests won't start following VBox Upgrade

Post by SAPB »

Thank you, Here is the log.
Attachments
VBox.zip
(19.79 KiB) Downloaded 16 times
mpack
Site Moderator
Posts: 39156
Joined: 4. Sep 2008, 17:09
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Mostly XP

Re: Old Centos guests won't start following VBox Upgrade

Post by mpack »

The only things that spring out at me are :-
  • The Guest Additions have not been installed.
  • The graphics ram allocation is only 12MB, which is teeny for a VM with a 3GB RAM allocation. I would increase to 128MB.
I see nothing else wrong in the log, so let's see where fixing the above takes us.
SAPB
Posts: 4
Joined: 11. Sep 2018, 18:25

Re: Old Centos guests won't start following VBox Upgrade

Post by SAPB »

I've upped the graphics ram as you suggested but the guest still doesn't start. As I can't get it to start, installing the Guest additions isn't possible. I'm guessing they weren't installed originally because the guest is console only and there wasn't much to be gained by doing so. Is there any point in rolling back the VBox Version, installing the guest additions and then upgrading Virtual box again?

Not sure if this is useful info but the hanging state that the guest gets into isn't always the same. Is there any way of grabbing all the output upto the point where it hangs?
mpack
Site Moderator
Posts: 39156
Joined: 4. Sep 2008, 17:09
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Mostly XP

Re: Old Centos guests won't start following VBox Upgrade

Post by mpack »

I had in mind to revert to the last working version and install the GAs, but if the guest is console only then installing the GAs would basically only give you shared folders, so is unlikely to be the cause of the problem.

I'll move this topic to the Linux Guests forum, you stand a better chance of finding Linux guest expertise there.

One other thing you could try is to change the OS type to "Red Hat (64bit)" in the VM settings. At the moment you are using a generic template.
SAPB
Posts: 4
Joined: 11. Sep 2018, 18:25

Re: Old Centos guests won't start following VBox Upgrade

Post by SAPB »

I did eventually get one of the VMs to run by creating a new VM using the existing virtual disk file.
I had intended to compare the .vbox files and see if there was any obvious difference, however somewhere along the way I appear to have lost all the files! I'm guessing that the host's hard disk has some problem - which may or may not have contributed to the original issue.
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