Virtualbox Manager suddenly only show blank gui on Linux Mint 20

Discussions related to using VirtualBox on Linux hosts.
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Hir0
Posts: 1
Joined: 15. Sep 2020, 11:25

Virtualbox Manager suddenly only show blank gui on Linux Mint 20

Post by Hir0 »

Hi

If I start the Virtualbox Manager, the GUI starts, but with complete empty contents.
GUI showing blank screen
GUI showing blank screen
2020-09-15_11-28.png (82.89 KiB) Viewed 2868 times
Unfortunately I have no approach of how to troubleshoot this.
Only can tell:
- It already worked on my Linux Mint 20 system couple of weeks ago
- Trying to solve this I removed the virtualbox installation from default version provided by Ubuntu repository and installed the recent version 6.1 directly from virtualbox HP

Unfortunately with the same result :(
Can someone help me to find the root cause and solve this? I not even know how to find logs or anything else to troubleshoot this...
Thanks in advance!
scottgus1
Site Moderator
Posts: 20965
Joined: 30. Dec 2009, 20:14
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Windows, Linux

Re: Virtualbox Manager suddenly only show blank gui on Linux Mint 20

Post by scottgus1 »

Log out and back in on your PC so no Virtualbox windows or processes are running.
Go to /home/{username}/.config/VirtualBox
Rename 'Virtualbox.xml' to 'Virtualbox.xml-bad'.
Rename 'Virtualbox.xml-prev' to 'Virtualbox.xml'.
Try Virtualbox again.

If the above does not work:
Log out and back in on your PC so no Virtualbox windows or processes are running.
Go to /home/{username}/.config
Move the Virtualbox folder to the desktop.
Try Virtualbox again.
Antonovichie
Posts: 5
Joined: 28. May 2020, 14:43

Re: Virtualbox Manager suddenly only show blank gui on Linux Mint 20

Post by Antonovichie »

This has also happened to me on Ubuntu 20.04. None of the proposed solutions work. I've been using vbox for a long time and I've never had this before... Since installing and setting up both Linux and Windows boxes I have been updating graphics cards drivers and tweaking battery config. Could either of these affect vbox?
Antonovichie
Posts: 5
Joined: 28. May 2020, 14:43

Re: Virtualbox Manager suddenly only show blank gui on Linux Mint 20

Post by Antonovichie »

Answering myself - yes - they can impact the situation. I have a sneaking suspicion the issue is with the Intel proprietary graphics driver I installed. vbox was working with the default FOSS driver, but in trying to improve batter life, I installed the proprietary Intel driver. If I switch to my discrete NVidia card (with proprietary driver), the vbox machines appear in the manager again and everything runs fine. Something else may have happened though, as VLC is now also borked and was working well (with hardware acceleration) at some point...

EDIT:
Ok, so worked it out - the Intel driver doesn't like the Gnome "fractional scaling" setting - if you activate it, it does the fractional scaling but various graphical things will stop working (VLC stops working but not mplayer or Chrome/YouTube, etc.). So I'm guessing the answer in these situations is to ask what one changed around display/graphics.
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