VirtualBox 6.0.4 VM with display driver = None crashes when started

[LordWektabyte]

With the version 6 of VirtualBox we can choose what display driver to choose for the VMs. What I found is that if you select "none" in a Virtual Machine "Preferences" -> "Display" -> "Display Driver" dropdown, the virtual machine crashes (interrupted state) when trying to show the screen. (i.e. not starting it in headless mode).
You can tell me that I should not tell VirtualBox to not use a display adapter and then asking to show me the screen, but I think it would be better to control this exception and throw a Warning or something because what happens is that a new window appears as usual to show the VMs screen but the VM is interrupted and you can not close this window with a black screen on the VM.

I don't know if it's clear enough because I'm not a native English speaker and I'm new on VBox forums; but do not hesitate to ask for screenshots if needed.

Thanks in advance,

Guillem

[socratis]

I don't know if it's clear enough because I'm not a native English speaker and I'm new on VBox forums

Your English is excellent and welcome to the forums!

but I think it would be better to control this exception and throw a Warning or something

A warning saying what?
<joking>

• Seriously now dude, are you kidding me? Do you want to stick a monitor with no GPU?

</joking>

The ideal would be to disable/greyout the "None" in the GUI. But that complicates the logic behind it unnecessarily I believe. You wouldn't change GPUs just for fun, unless you were fooling around. And if you're fooling around and you get a crash, you learn not to do it again

And BTW I tried to crash it on my OSX host, and nothing happened, it simply kept on working. What crash do you see and with what host?

With the version 6 of VirtualBox we can choose what display driver to choose for the VMs.

No, it was there for many, many years. Just not in the GUI, only in the command line.

[LordWektabyte]

Hello Socratis and thanks for yout answer.
I'm talking about a CentOS 7 guest without GUI, just a minimal installation for a develop web server, running on a Fedora 29 host.

What I would do, instead of graying out the ''None'' option in the GPU drop down, would be to gray out the "Show" button when the VM is running and you have selected "None" as the GPU.

You wouldn't change GPUs just for fun, unless you were fooling around. And if you're fooling around and you get a crash, you learn not to do it again

I agree, but if there's the option to optimize it because it's a headless virtual server, you don't need to virtualize a GPU because you administer it from SSH within the host so that is why I think it would be useful to avoid innecessary crashes that would corrupt the filesystem of the guest...

Seriously now dude, are you kidding me? Do you want to stick a monitor with no GPU?

BTW, this could be a great message to display...

[socratis]

What I would do, instead of graying out the ''None'' option in the GPU drop down, would be to gray out the "Show" button when the VM is running and you have selected "None" as the GPU.

Not a bad idea... not a bad at all! In fact, I'm moving the whole thread to the "Suggestions" area from the "Linux Hosts" one.

BTW, I finally managed to get it to crash on both my OSX 10.11.6 and my Win7-64 hosts. Didn't test it on my Win10-64, but I have no doubt that it's going to crash as well. I was thinking that a ticket is required in this case. Do you want to open it yourself, or do you want me to open it? I don't think that such a thing exists. And, I don't know if the headless/3D combination (which also crashes) should be addressed there as well...

but if there's the option to optimize it because it's a headless virtual server, you don't need to virtualize a GPU

There's very little overhead if any, especially if you're running it with the Headless option. We're in the "splitting hairs" sphere now...

BTW, this could be a great message to display...

Straight and to the point. But you and I know that it's not going to end up looking anything close to that!