Host GUI freezes when launching a VM

[corentin]

Hello,

I can't get VirtualBox booting my linux guests, here is some context:

- using Fedora 21 on a thinkpad x1 carbon 2015
- I'm completely new to Fedora
- and trying to setup my VMs as I had on my previous computer (debian on macbook 2008)

symptoms:

- host GUI will freeze at some point,
- I could not regain control of the computer by killing processes, or even trying to reboot. The only thing I could get working was to hold the power button.

I've installed VirtualBox via the rpmfusion-free repo and the virtualbox repo, same problem.

I've seen users used to have problem with the same computer / proc in ticket #13820, but the fix has been released, so it should not be related.

Also I've tried to install a debian (netinst) with default VBox options, and the freeze happened during the partition formatting step (each time I tried).

At that point I don't know if I lack basic admin skills to fix an obvious misconfiguration or if it's a virtualbox bug, or a Fedora one, so I'm begging for power user insight!

[mpack]

A 64bit OS in 512MB RAM with an 8GB hard disk? That doesn't seem like a likely recipe.

[corentin]

Yes indeed! Did not though about that. Anyway, I've tried with 2GB ram + 16GB hard-drive, it still freezes exactly the same.

[mpack]

I see nothing else amiss in the log, and I'm not aware that anyone else is reporting this issue. I have no direct evidence that VirtualBox is even involved in the problem. It could be something indirect, like a bad sector on the host drive that gets touched every now and then. Or perhaps a network glitch.

[tannerjfco]

I am also encountering this issue on a brand new Dell XPS 13 running Ubuntu 14.04. I've attempted to spin up a Centos and an Ubuntu VM, both of which will completely freeze the host machine shortly after the VM starts up. Log attached, hopefully it can shed some light on the issue.

[Perryg]

I am also encountering this issue on a brand new Dell XPS 13 running Ubuntu 14.04. I've attempted to spin up a Centos and an Ubuntu VM, both of which will completely freeze the host machine shortly after the VM starts up. Log attached, hopefully it can shed some light on the issue.

Unfortunately we don't support VirtualBox when using vagrant. If you would like to start over and just use VirtualBox and post a log file if it fails that way we may be able to help.

[corentin]

I've tried to reinstall other OS (on the host):

- if will freeze the same with Fedora 22
- with Debian 8 it will not freeze, but VM will hang at a "starting" state, with a progress bar at 20% (a one that I've never seen before)

While it often freezes at the exact same step, it may vary a little.

[corentin]

Well, it actually seems to work, as far as I've been with the test VM.

I did not give a shot at https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/13820, but obviously I should have: adding nosmap to the kernel option at boot time did the job.

The ticket is marked closed and fixed for the release I'm using, that's why I did not try the manual procedure.

For those who are used to bug reporting: should I celebrate silently or does it worth to reopen or comment the ticket?

[mpack]

For those who are used to bug reporting: should I celebrate silently or does it worth to reopen or comment the ticket?

If you are sure that the ticket was wrongly closed then certainly you should reopen it and provide your evidence.

[tannerjfco]

This is a Virtualbox issue related to Broadwell CPUs. Thanks to corentin, I was able to find this follow-up ticket to the ticket he referenced previously. The follow-up ticket is here: https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/13961 I was able to apply the latest patch in that thread and patch with the following:

Code: Select all   Expand viewCollapse view

cd /usr/src/vboxhost-4.3.20
sudo -s
patch -p1 < path/to/patch
/etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup

This resolved the issue of Virtualbox freezing the host, and successfully spin up VMs.