Virtual Machine boots to a black screen with cursor

Discussions related to using VirtualBox on Windows hosts.
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Spencedogg
Posts: 1
Joined: 18. Jul 2021, 03:10

Virtual Machine boots to a black screen with cursor

Post by Spencedogg »

Ever since i tried to increase the disk space on my virtual machine from 10 to 20 gb, every time i try to start the machine it will freeze on the ubuntu logo. i checked around i made sure i had Hyper-v and 3D acceloration are off. (i turned off something called hypervisor in my windows settings). and that didnt change anything. i also increased the display memory to 32mb. my VM log is attached. Please let me know if anyone was able to find a resolution to this.
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CommsIntegration-2021-07-17-20-17-27.log
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scottgus1
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Joined: 30. Dec 2009, 20:14
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Windows, Linux

Re: Virtual Machine boots to a black screen with cursor

Post by scottgus1 »

RAM is overprovisioned:
00:00:36.940326 Host RAM: 8108MB (7.9GB) total, 3118MB (3.0GB) available
00:00:37.407637 RamSize <integer> = 0x000000012a000000 (4 999 610 368, 4 768 MB, 4.6 GB)
00:00:37.408568 VRamSize <integer> = 0x0000000002000000 (33 554 432, 32 MB)
However, this does not appear to be affecting the VM at the logged run. Virtualbox VMs have 'lazy' memory allocation (take it when it's accessed) and Linux does not access all its RAM at boot. The overprovisioning will bite one day, though: consider reducing VM RAM or shutting down other host programs to free RAM for the VM.

There is nothing wrong with the Virtualbox 'hardware' in the portion of log posted, it all seems to be working well. The VM does not have 3D acceleration enabled and is running an 800x600 screen, so 32MB video RAM should be ok. More video RAM may be needed if you increase screen size or enable 3D.

The probable cause of the boot fail is this:
Spencedogg wrote:i tried to increase the disk space on my virtual machine from 10 to 20 gb, every time i try to start the machine it will freeze on the ubuntu logo.
Though I surmise there was one preceeding step:
Spencedogg wrote:(The VM ran out of disk space) ... i tried to increase the disk space.... it will freeze on the ubuntu logo.
I may be wrong about what happened to your VM, but I do know that Ubuntu is known to fail to boot to the desktop when the disk is filled up. It does this on real PCs too. The conflation of 'Ubuntu doesn't boot to the desktop' and 'resize the disk' is telling. I believe the solution is to boot the OS to text mode then delete enough files. Web-search how to do this.

Also, you'd need to increase the partition size inside the VM after increasing the disk size in Virtualbox. Then the OS will see the increased space.
fth0
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Re: Virtual Machine boots to a black screen with cursor

Post by fth0 »

scottgus1 wrote:I believe the solution is to boot the OS to text mode then delete enough files. [...] Also, you'd need to increase the partition size inside the VM after increasing the disk size in Virtualbox.
An alternative solution is to boot the VM from a Linux ISO image and use the partitioning tool of your choice (e.g. gparted) to increase the partition size.
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