[solved] frequent host crashs/freeze - Failed to initialize parser

[Hermann]

Hi,

since some time I'm having issue's with my vBox host machine. There are frequent crashes of the host machine. First I thought it's a host OS related problem (Linux MInt) , but now I think it's more related to VirtualBox because the issue only come's up while the VM is running.
I wrote the following in the Mint forum . I have also added Linux Mint logs in that forum,

Up until the point I'm starting the VM, the system works fine. Then I start the VM and at some point (e.g. after few minutes, up to 10 min.) Mint freezes. I can still move the mouse arrow (actually it has some "pixelish" square box instead of an arrow) and often times I can still switch to a terminal with ctrl+ F2,F3, etc. , but other than that the system doesn't react anymore.
I've waited some time 10 - 20 min. , but that doesn't help. The freeze remains.
Bofore starting the VM, closing Firefox and other apps that work with video seem to have an impact because the freeze doesn't come or much, much later, even when the VM is running.

I do get a lot of the following messages on the CLI / Terminal after the freeze. I can also pause the VM during the freeze with a command and reboot Mint with the reboot command.

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drm:amdgpu_cs_ioctl [amdgpu]] *ERROR* Failed to initialize parser -125!

I've tried a different Kernel, but it didn't help. Also I'm on the latest mainboard BIOS version.
activating 3D acceleration support for the VM didn't help.

Thanks in advance for your help.
Hermann

Host: Mint 20.3
vBox 7.0.8 m 3D acceleration enable and disabled tested, vBoxSVGA.
Guest : Windows 10 + the 7.0.8 guest additions installed

[scottgus1]

One thing we'd need clarification on is if you're using official Virtualbox downloaded from http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads or Ubuntu's fork.

This can be seen in the first line of the VM's vbox.log. If the Virtualbox version has a "_Ubuntu" in it, then it's the fork.

The forks get supported by the Linux distro's. Official gets supported here.

If you don't see the "_Ubuntu", then please zip and post the latest vbox.log here, using the forum's Upload Attachment tab.

[Hermann]

I've downloaded the deb file from http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
There is no Ubuntu in the first line of the log.
I believe my distro's officially supported version is only vBox 6.x because that version is in the Mint app store.

I've attached the latest 2 log's cause I'm not sure if the freeze is included in the latest log (according to the time stamps).

[fth0]

I noticed two types of problems in the log files:

00:42:15.699162 DxvkSubmissionQueue: Command submission failed: VK_ERROR_DEVICE_LOST

This log message indicates an issue with the new graphics implementation of VirtualBox 7.0, which uses DXVK (DirectX to Vulkan) on the host side. I don't know what the error really signifies, but you could try the VirtualBox test builds 7.0.9r157502 or newer, which are supposed to have fixed graphics issues.

00:00:35.892042 VD#0: Read request was active for 31 seconds
00:00:35.892042 AsyncCompletion: Task 0x007f2400f1dfc0 completed after 31 seconds

These log messages can be found in both log files. They indicate problems when accessing the virtual hard disk images on your host disk, and often indicate disk degradation.

[Hermann]

I did try the test build.
I've uninstalled vBox and installed the test build successfully. However, the problem got worse with that test build. Right after the start of my VM, the problem came up immediately, where is usually takes a while to appear. Also this issue shouldn't have come up at all cause I wasn't using the other apps (e.g. Firefox) that did interfere with vBox.
So I did uninstall the test build as suggested with

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sudo ./VirtualBox-7.0.9-157502-Linux_amd64.run uninstall

That output said that uninstall was successful.
I did a reboot of my Linux but after Linux booted, all my icon's disappeared from my Cinammon Desktop. Actually the icons are still there, but only with a white square box instead of the symbol for the app (e.g. the fox for firefox, etc. ). The background of the desktop is black (no custom background image) and also all symbols in the task bar are invisible, yet functional.
My Screenshot tool Shutter is not working anymore. Firefox and a few other apps I've tested still work.
My file manager nemo is not working anymore.
A reboot didn't help.
This is actually pretty bad
It looks like the uninstallation process has damaged the file manager and the desktop manager.

[Hermann]

meanwhile I did install the test build again and the icon's are back.
Then I tried uninstall again and icon disappeared once again.
So installing the test build brings back the icons but removing it also remove's the icon's.

So I did install vBox 6.x and the icon's are back.
Apparently the uninstall routine breaks something in my Linux (maybe Python).
So now I will see if vBox 6.x is working and stick to that if yes.

Actually I didn't wanted to use vBox 7 in the first place with my Linux Mint, because I know it was not fully tested with my Distro. However, I had some other issue and I wanted to try it out if it fixes it. Meanwhile I've swapped my Nvidia graphics card with a AMD Radeon and hope that will work.

I will keep your other comment about the disk issue in mind,
Thanks.

[fth0]

Thanks for reporting back!

Your description of what happened to desktop icons is strange, and I have no good idea what would cause this.

[scottgus1]

Sounds a little like a Linux version of Windows' old "DLL Hell", where some apps' dll's overwrote other apps', and each app expected a certain version of the dll, and the overwrite broke the old apps. Windows started doing some side-by-side thing or some such where each app's dll's got put in their own special spot so they wouldn't overwrite each other.

Perhaps there's been some footling with permissions that has broken something? I haven't read of Virtualbox uninstalls killing host icons.

[Hermann]

I did gave the test build file executable permission and used sudo to install / uninstall because the I received such a message on the CLI to do so.
Other than that I not aware that I did something else with permissions.

Regarding the freeze issue, I ran Virtualbox 6 almost the whole day yesterday and things looked good. No more freezing issues and that was very unusual. I thought the issue was fixed with going back to vBox 6, but this morning a woke up my Linux from sleep and Linux crashed again pretty quickly with then known issue I've described above. I couldn't even use the terminal anymore, which I usually still could.

dunno what I should make out of this now. Has vBox 7 damaged my Linux to the point that even a uninstall of that version didn't help or is it a problem with the graphics card driver. There is a error message when booting the Linux that indicates (IMO) that it rather to do with the grafics driver because it in the very beginning of the boot process, even before vBox services are started.

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drm:amdgpu_dm_initialize_drm_device [amdgpu]] *ERROR* Failed to register vline0 irq 30!

I guess I'll leave it at that from concerning vBox. The issue with the icon's is a bit strange and don't seem to be OK though.
Anyways, thanks all for your thoughts and comments.

[Hermann]

After a lot of troubleshooting I've remembered that there is a SATA error message in the log's that I neglected cause it seemed so obvious that it has to do with the amdgpu.
I've changed the cable to another SATA controller and indeed the symptoms were gone.It wasn't even about the controller to which the system (OS) SSD was connected to. It was a secondary SSD on which a vBox image is running and that I frequently use.

The mainboard is quite old (10 years) and was heavily used, still with good performance for my daily work. After about 1 week of error free usage, the error re-appeared however. In a low (and still acceptable) frequency.
It looks like all 3 SATA controller on the mainboard are defective. Time for a new one....