Win10 host, VB 5.2.2 r119230 - Debian + Ubuntu install failures

[nsmith17044]

I have i5-6500 3.2GHz, 16G Ram, 447GB Raid1 SSDs running Windows 10 Pro HOST pc. Motherboard is an MSI Z270 PC MATE.
I'm running VirtualBox 5.2.2 r119230

I have been able to install and run a Win7Pro 64 bit image on a VDI without issues and it seems to behave properly.

When trying to install Ubuntu 16.04 or Debian 9.3, the installation will run up to a point where I start seeing ata3.00 exception messages with buffer I/o errors on sda1. I see 'ata3: hard resetting link' and looks like it restarts but it looks like other drivers have failed and aren't restarting.

The virtual machine will not shutdown properly without being terminated by a shutdown of the Win10 host. Trying to take a machine snapshot hangs VB on the 'Saving the machine state...(3/4)' message also seems to lock up VB.

I've tried different number of processors and ram size configurations for the vm but all seem to result in the same problem.

I have attached the VBox.log and VBoxHardening.log files (in a ZIP) for the last debian9.3 install attempt hoping someone can give me a clue on this.

Can someone give me an idea on how to proceed? Have others seen VirtualBox completely lock up?

[nsmith17044]

I tried with the Acceleration->Nested Paging option turned off and was able to at least complete an install attempt.

However there seems to be other issues with Virtual box as I can't seem to reliable insert / remove optical media without restarting the VM sometimes.

The KDE desktop wouldn't allow me to support the full monitor size even though the VirtualBox VGA driver looked to be installed (via lspci).

I can't seem to get the VBoxLinuxAdditions.run file to complete as it needed the GCC Make Perl packages and linux kernel headers installed. I managed to get the linux headers installed but when I tried installing 'make' with the 'apper' application when I rebooted something stepped on the init scripts and now I can't get KDE destop to start.

Anybody have a link to a safe process of getting Debian configured under VB 5.2.2?

[nsmith17044]

The 'successful' attempt must have been luck. I haven't been able to re-install Debian successfully on a new VDI. It seems to through some error or hang at some point again. Ubuntu hasn't completed yet without throwing the ata3 exceptions. The nested paging option doesn't seem to be the issue after all.

[nsmith17044]

I un-installed 5.2.2 and installed 5.1.28. On the first attempt I was able to install Ubuntu 16.04 although it seemed to hang on the first reboot. A forced restart got Ubuntu to the log-in screen and it appears to be operational.

Maybe 5.2.2 has compatibility issues?

[Perryg]

I don't do Windows myself so I can't tell you much other than for the guest you posted the log for ( Debian 9 ) you need to enable PAE in the settings. I also see a real struggle with the virtual drive. Is this on a rotational drive? Also try stopping your virus software and see if it allows the install to happen. Other than that I can't tell you more so it is wait for a Windows user to help.

[mpack]

Your CPU seems to be identical to mine, which makes close comparison possible with a good boot. Everything at your end seems to be going swimmingly until we get to this bit, after the VM init is complete, just after it starts booting the guest OS :-

00:06:59.455436 VD#0: Write request was active for 26 seconds
00:07:05.435144 VD#0: Write request was active for 32 seconds
...
00:07:05.921298 AHCI#0: Port 0 reset
00:07:05.922974 VD#0: Cancelling all active requests
00:07:05.922994 VD#0: Request{0x00000009be7740}:
00:07:05.922995 Type=WRITE State=ALLOCATED Id=0x18 SubmitTs=174823783 {33400} Flags=0x2
00:07:05.922997 Offset=432013312 Size=1048576 Left=1048576 BufSize=4096
00:07:05.923001 VD#0: Request{0x00000004434e40}:
00:07:05.923001 Type=WRITE State=ALLOCATED Id=0x8 SubmitTs=174826207 {30976} Flags=0x2
00:07:05.923017 Offset=6599028736 Size=339968 Left=339968 BufSize=8192
00:07:05.923020 VD#0: Request{0x0000000443a740}:
00:07:05.923020 Type=WRITE State=ALLOCATED Id=0x19 SubmitTs=174823783 {33400} Flags=0x2
00:07:05.923021 Offset=433061888 Size=1048576 Left=1048576 BufSize=4096
00:07:05.923024 VD#0: Request{0x00000004434740}:
00:07:05.923024 Type=WRITE State=ALLOCATED Id=0x1a SubmitTs=174823783 {33400} Flags=0x2
00:07:05.923025 Offset=434110464 Size=1048576 Left=1048576 BufSize=4096
00:07:05.923040 VD#0: Request{0x00000004444740}:
00:07:05.923040 Type=WRITE State=ACTIVE Id=0x3 SubmitTs=174823783 {33400} Flags=0x2
00:07:05.923041 Offset=442499072 Size=1048576 Left=1048576 BufSize=1048576
... and many more

Obviously, no disk write should not take 26 or 32 seconds. So in addition to what Perry has said, I'd want to consider if something is seriously wrong with the drive where the VDI is located. That would be "C:\Users\nsmith\VirtualBox VMs\Debian9\Debian9.vdi". At the very least I'd run a chkdsk on that drive. I'd also consider whether the VDI has been moved since it was created, and could it possibly have been corrupted at that time.


Note the point that your comparison with the Win7 VM doesn't mean much, because we're not suggesting that the choice of guest OS that's the problem, it's a problem with that part of the host drive, or that VDI.