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OS/2 Warp 4.52 crashes on bootup

Posted: 24. Jul 2021, 01:39
by Stiobhan
vblog.zip
log and PNG
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This is VirtualBox VM 6.1.22 on an OpenSUSE Tumbleweed host newly installed on an Asus ZenBook 13 (Japanese locale). VT-d is enabled in the BIOS.
I have OS/2 Warp 4.52 running without problem as guest on two other OpenSUSE Leap computers (42.3 and 15.2).

What I've tried:

- Booting an appliance exported from one of the other computers
- Creating a new OS/2 machine using the *.vdi disk from one of the other computers

In both these cases, the OS/2 boot manager appears, but the machine crashes (guru meditation) as soon as the boot blob appears.

I've also tried installing OS/2 anew from Convenience Pack *.iso images, but in this case, too, the machine crashes immediately.

I downloaded and imported one of the prepackaged Oracle Solaris appliances into this VirtualBox setup, and it runs fine.

Any advice?

Log attached; screenshots also available.

Re: OS/2 Warp 4.52 crashes on bootup

Posted: 24. Jul 2021, 12:08
by mpack
00:00:10.559960 VRamSize <integer> = 0x0000000000900000 (9 437 184, 9 MB)
Only 9MB for graphics RAM? Did you actually adjust this downwards? Why? And isn't the settings editor showing this setting as invalid?

The VM doesn't seem to be happy with the boot drive, and the naming of the drive seems quite strange to me too ("Warp 4J-disk001.vdi"), almost as if somebody copied over the compressed VMDK component of an OVA and simply renamed it instead of properly importing the OVA.

Re: OS/2 Warp 4.52 crashes on bootup

Posted: 24. Jul 2021, 14:14
by Stiobhan
Thanks for your response. This is all very self-learned seat-of-the-pants stuff to me, so I'd be grateful if you would bear with me.
Only 9MB for graphics RAM? Did you actually adjust this downwards? Why? And isn't the settings editor showing this setting as invalid?
Yes.
No.
As far I recall 9MB has always been the default presented to me.
No.

9 MB works fine with my existing installations, incidentally (screenshot attached) ...though I did push the main memory setting up from the default of 128 MB to 1024 MB.
The VM doesn't seem to be happy with the boot drive, and the naming of the drive seems quite strange to me too ("Warp 4J-disk001.vdi"), almost as if somebody copied over the compressed VMDK component of an OVA and simply renamed it unstead of properly importing the OVA.
For the last part, somebody didn't.

Telling me something looks wrong isn't helpful. I know something's wrong -- that's why I'm here, hat in hand.

Again, I ask -- any advice? I would be very grateful.

Re: OS/2 Warp 4.52 crashes on bootup

Posted: 24. Jul 2021, 14:45
by scottgus1
If you open the posted vbox.log, then search for the word "booting", you'll see a lot of
00:01:59.001100 VMMDev: Guest Log: int13_harddisk: function 15, unmapped device for ELDL=##
which is probably what Mpack is talking about in regards to the VM's disk not being liked.

Is this a log of a copied VM? If so, can you post a log of a freshly-installed OS Warp VM?

Also, can you please post a log from an OS warp VM that works on your other PC?

So far, considering that VMs that worked on other PCs fail on this new PC, the only variable that may be influencing the outcome is the new PC. VT-x is enabled, which is good (VT-d is a different function and is not needed for Virtualbox). You're running the SUSE fork of Virtualbox, not the official release from Virtualbox.org: this may or may not have something to do with it; a comparison log from a working OS Warp VM may tell.

FWIW a new OS Warp 4.5 VM on my host starts with 6MB video RAM.

FWIW2, I seem to recall that some OS's might complain if there is too much RAM. OS Warp seems to start with requiring 4-8MB RAM. Could a gig be too much?

Another thought, to copy a VM the best practice is to copy the whole VM folder, not just the disk file. The vdi is only the hard drive; the VM folder contains all the rest of the 'hardware' that the OS on the drive is tuned to.

Re: OS/2 Warp 4.52 crashes on bootup

Posted: 24. Jul 2021, 16:31
by mpack
Stiobhan wrote:though I did push the main memory setting up from the default of 128 MB to 1024 MB.
I would definitely put that back to 128MB. 1GB RAM would have been humungous in 2001, and it would not surprise me at all if it caused overflow problems in an OS designed for late 1980s hardware.

Basically, if you want to emulate a PC from year XX, it's best to stick to typical hardware specs for that year.
Stiobhan wrote:
the naming of the drive seems quite strange to me too ("Warp 4J-disk001.vdi"), almost as if somebody copied over the compressed VMDK component of an OVA and simply renamed it unstead of properly importing the OVA.
For the last part, somebody didn't.
The VM was definitely not created in the normal way. If that was so then both the VM and the hard disk would have the same name, only the file extensions would differ. Instead you have a VM called "Warp 4J" and a primary disk called "Warp 4J-disk001.vdi". I'd like an explanation, since it's hard to know where you made an error if I don't understand what you did.

Re: OS/2 Warp 4.52 crashes on bootup

Posted: 24. Jul 2021, 17:58
by fth0
VirtualBox 6.1.22 does not support Linux kernel 5.13, neither on the host nor in the guest. Please use VirtualBox 6.1.24 or newer.

Re: OS/2 Warp 4.52 crashes on bootup

Posted: 25. Jul 2021, 11:30
by ghr
For 4.50/4.51/4.52:
  1. video RAM of 9 MB is fine (I use that with 1280*1024) and 9M is the suggested value in VBox 5.2.32
  2. RAM: 4.0 supported up to 64MB? But 4.52 (just tried) can be given 4G and it sees approx 3.6G (more than WinXP) (needed a utility to get that number)
  3. RAM at boot: 64M is fine, I think I never used more than 512M but that worked too
  4. HDD: just go with the suggested 2G (assuming a fresh install)
In other words, this points to suspected install media.... Even more so because the iso's seem to be freely available these days.

Re: OS/2 Warp 4.52 crashes on bootup

Posted: 25. Jul 2021, 11:35
by mpack
ghr wrote: In other words, this points to suspected install media.... Even more so because the iso's seem to be freely available these days.
I'd be surprised if this was installed from ISO - it wouldn't explain the naming inconsistency. I'm betting it was downloaded as a ready-made disk image, and that's what I'm looking for confirmation on. That would mean that the OP created a new VM around the existing disk image, and that, I suspect, will be the root cause of the crash.

Since VDI would not be a typical distribution format, I'm also thinking that the disk was initially in some other format such as vmdk or vhd, and has been converted (or simply renamed) by the OP.

Re: OS/2 Warp 4.52 crashes on bootup

Posted: 25. Jul 2021, 11:44
by ghr
Agreed, perhaps the OP / Stiobhan could try a fresh install using (unsuspected) ACP iso's?

Re: OS/2 Warp 4.52 crashes on bootup

Posted: 25. Jul 2021, 14:33
by Stiobhan
Thanks for the feedback.

The original working installation is from licensed Convenience Package *.iso images of the Japanese version of OS/2 Warp 4.52.
Here's the start of the *.ova file that I'm trying to import, which was exported from that very working installation on OpenSUSE Leap 42.3 (the one in the screenshot already posted, in which you can see the VM disk file is named "Warp 4J.vdi").
Screenshot_20210725_211711.png
Screenshot_20210725_211711.png (8.23 KiB) Viewed 33204 times
I have no idea why the exporter appended "-disk001" to the name of the *.vdi file inside the exported *.ova file.

As I mentioned in my initial message, attempts at fresh installations fail in the same way. Really, if I could accomplish a fresh installation, I wouldn't be here asking about this.

Re: OS/2 Warp 4.52 crashes on bootup

Posted: 25. Jul 2021, 17:29
by ghr
A fresh install here: using Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, VirtualBox 5.2.32, 2 CD set (boot & client) reporting itself as 14.086_W4. No issues here (using defaults as much as possible), but probably no help for you either?

Re: OS/2 Warp 4.52 crashes on bootup

Posted: 26. Jul 2021, 03:16
by Stiobhan
fth0 wrote:
VirtualBox 6.1.22 does not support Linux kernel 5.13, neither on the host nor in the guest. Please use VirtualBox 6.1.24 or newer.
I installed 6.1.24 and imported the *.ova file, and Warp now boots fine. That fixed it. Thanks very much!

My thanks also to everyone else who took the time to offer advice. I'm in business now.

Re: OS/2 Warp 4.52 crashes on bootup

Posted: 26. Jul 2021, 11:28
by fth0
Thanks for reporting back! It's helpful, because it was a new variant of the crashes we already knew about.