Guru meditation with 9Front

[peterhull90]

9Front (64 bit) doesn't boot any more, giving a Guru Meditation error. I appreciate 9front is not mainstream and therefore not a priority for VirtualBox but, it has worked fine in the past and (correct me if I'm wrong) guru meditation means a crash in VirtualBox itself which shouldn't happen.

Using Version 7.0.8 r156879 on Windows 11, and 9Front from 9front-9442.0e66f87316e571f7edf5274369ec69a5905507aa.amd64.iso

Edit:  Further information - it will boot if I use option "*nomtrr=" to 9front's boot system - this disables use of memory type range registers, which implies maybe VirtualBox's concept of MTRR doesn't agree with 9front.

[peterhull90]

Log (didn't attach first time, I had to zip it)

[scottgus1]

If I read the log correctly, the VM booted from the CD-ROM and did not touch the hard disk.

However, host Hyper-V is enabled and the VM is using only one processor. Some Linux VMs avoid kernel panics on host-Hyper-V-enabled Virtualbox by using 2 processors. Try 2 in your VM.

[peterhull90]

Correct, 9front has an bootable 'live' CD (I gave the filename of it in my first post) which allows you to try it and then install to HD if desired. But it fails to start the kernel so we don't get as far as installing.

I tried with 2 CPUs and it did the same thing (would it help to have the log from that?)

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly.

[scottgus1]

would it help to have the log from that?

It may, but I wouldn't know what else to do with it. Posting the logs on the Bugtracker may help the devs, since 9Front worked before, so a bug may have crept in.

[fth0]

9front probably is too sophisticated an OS to being run by a simple hypervisor like VirtualBox, especially when the latter is running in a Hyper-V L1 Root partition.

[javispedro]

It boots here with 2 CPU cores, under a Linux host (so no HyperV).
Edit: yes, 7.0.8.

[scottgus1]

Thanks for the info, Javispedro! If Javis is also running 7.0.8, this might indicate that Virtualbox is OK and Hyper-V is interfering.

it has worked fine in the past

A good question to answer might be, was host Hyper-V enabled in the past? Possibly unanswerable, but if you can remember between then and now, were there any major host OS Feature Updates (the big every-six-months ones), especially recently, then maybe Hyper-V got enabled. HMR3Init: Attempting fall back to NEM (Hyper-V is active)

[peterhull90]

Apologies for the delay.

I don't have Hyper-V per se installed on my new laptop but I've got windows 11 with the 'memory integrity' feature enabled, which (as I understand it) activates Microsoft's virtualisation.

I had 9front working on my previous laptop which did not have this enabled therefore it's very likely this is the reason.

I tried installing the actual Hyper-V client temporarily and actually that ran 9front without issues, so I guess it's not a fundamental issue with the virtualisation.

This is beyond my knowledge but I found a similar looking report on BHyve here which seemed to be suggesting some issue with the MTRR - and maybe the same issue is affecting VB?

I guess filing a bug in the bugtracker would be my best option?

[multiOS]

The 'conflict' between Microsoft Hyper-V and/or Virtualisation Based Security features and VirtualBox is a well known issue. See the VirtualBox User Manual (Version 7.0.8 ) Section 15.2 Known Issues second bullet point, so I suspect another Bugtracker Ticket is unlikely to be necessary.

You could also follow action suggested this Guide: viewtopic.php?f=25&t=99390 which might help.