virtualbox suddenly quits

[frappe]

How do I start to diagnose a rare but not unique problem where a windows 10 32 bit guest under a ubuntu 16.04 64bit host quits without warning. I see nothing in /var/log. Virtualbox is up to date ( v5.1.2 r108956). Usually I run windows and ubuntu VMs just fine.

[socratis]

1. Start the VM. Not from a saved or suspended state. Clean start.
2. Take the steps required to generate/observe the error. (just wait in your case, I guess?)
3. Right-click on the VM in the VirtualBox Manager. Select "Show Log..."
4. Save it (just the first log), ZIP it and attach it in your response (see the "Upload attachment" at the bottom of the form).

[frappe]

It happened again, quite quickly; this time i was suspending the vm but it didn't finish the process and now shows up as "aborted" state.

I'm not sure i followed step 1; it wasn't long after a clean start but i think there was a suspend between the starting up and the crash. Does it affect the log?

[socratis]

So does it happen during the suspension? I didn't get that feeling from your first post.

In any event, the log stops abruptly right after the VM is suspended, so it doesn't reveal anything (not to my eyes at least). And yes, it does make a difference if it is a clean start vs a resume operation. Not particularly in this case (maybe) but we have to have a standard log.

It's like going for a blood analysis and they tell you not to eat anything in the morning. It can alter the results

[frappe]

So does it happen during the suspension? I didn't get that feeling from your first post.

In any event, the log stops abruptly right after the VM is suspended, so it doesn't reveal anything (not to my eyes at least). And yes, it does make a difference if it is a clean start vs a resume operation. Not particularly in this case (maybe) but we have to have a standard log.

It's like going for a blood analysis and they tell you not to eat anything in the morning. It can alter the results

I know what you mean. Ideally i would fire it up, it would crash and some point and i'd grab the logs. But how does suspending/resuming the vm make the logging around the point where it actually crashed less useful? It's hard to see how you'd ever get a satisfactory log unless you could make it crash on demand.

The crash was during the suspend process. It was saving state but i noticed it finished a little more quickly than usual and when i reloaded Virtualbox it said "aborted".

Due to the need to connect to my work computer, which wasn't working properly on this windows 10.1 vm, and a lack of disk space, i've deleted this VM and have gone back to my windows 7 backup from before I upgraded it to windows 10. The upgrade was a mistake; windows 10 is a lot slower on my pc, and a lot more unstable under virtualbox. I'm not sure i ever had this problem on windows 7. So I can't perform any further tests on this particular windows 10.1 vm. I'll see if the problem reoccurs on the windows 7 guest.

The last lines of the log mention opengl, and i do have a problem running chrome on a linux vm, and even on the host i have caused ubuntu to hang by playing video, so perhaps i have a graphics driver issue. Although it's hard to see that i'm doing anything especially taxing graphics wise when suspending a vm.

Thanks anyway.

[socratis]

But how does suspending/resuming the vm make the logging around the point where it actually crashed less useful?

Because there are different "mechanisms" involved. No initialization and no cleaning up (actually it's a different initialization and clean up). Plus, if the problem were to be reproduced, but it only happened with a saved state being involved, it would be much more difficult to get a hold of the specific VM at the specific state.