Failing to save the state of the Virtual Machine

[sbrown02]

Hi Everybody,

I have a VirtualBox Version 5.0.24 r108355 running a Windows 7 VM on my iMac with El Capitan 10.11.5. The user account it's installed and running within is an Admin account on my Mac. With Finder I checked the folder permissions and the user has read/write privileges for the folder in question. The VM will boot and operate fine. It's only when I try to Save the Machine State and exit Virtualbox that it give me this (see picture attached) error. Then the next time I try to startup it recognizes the system was shutdown improperly and asks if I want to reboot in safe mode or not. What do I need to do to fix this?

Thanks

Steven

[socratis]

Open up a Terminal (Applications/Utilities) and issue the command:

   ls -alR /Users/Nancy/VirtualBox\ VMs

Post the output. If you could enclose it in the

Code: Select all

 tag it would be much easier to read.

[quote="sbrown02"]The user account it's installed and running within is an Admin account on my Mac. ... Thanks Steven... /Users/Nancy[/quote]???

[sbrown02]

Thanks for the reply and here you go:

Code: Select all

iMac:~ Nancy$ ls -alr /users/nancy/virtualbox\ VMs
total 24
drwxr-xr-x+  8 Nancy  staff   272 Jul  4 08:24 Windows 7
-rw-r--r--@  1 Nancy  staff  8196 Jul  9 08:09 .DS_Store
drwxr-xr-x@ 65 Nancy  staff  2210 Jul  6 04:23 ..
drwxr-xr-x+  4 Nancy  staff   136 Oct 23  2015 .
iMac:~ Nancy$ 

[socratis]

ls -alR

ls -alr

Please notice the difference in the capital r/R. Can you please try again? With a capital R this time?

[sbrown02]

Sorry about that:)

Code: Select all

iMac:~ Nancy$ ls -alR /users/nancy/virtualbox\ VMs
total 24
drwxr-xr-x+  4 Nancy  staff   136 Oct 23  2015 .
drwxr-xr-x@ 65 Nancy  staff  2210 Jul  6 04:23 ..
-rw-r--r--@  1 Nancy  staff  8196 Jul  9 08:09 .DS_Store
drwxr-xr-x+  8 Nancy  staff   272 Jul  4 08:24 Windows 7

/users/nancy/virtualbox VMs/Windows 7:
total 112
drwxr-xr-x+ 8 Nancy  staff    272 Jul  4 08:24 .
drwxr-xr-x+ 4 Nancy  staff    136 Oct 23  2015 ..
-rw-r--r--@ 1 Nancy  staff   6148 Jul  9 08:18 .DS_Store
drwxr-xr-x+ 7 Nancy  staff    238 Jul  9 07:48 Logs
drwxr-xr-x+ 2 Nancy  staff     68 Jul  9 08:51 Snapshots
-rw-r--r--+ 1 Nancy  staff  13401 Jul  2 17:39 Windows 7.vbox
-rw-r--r--+ 1 Nancy  staff  13458 Jul  2 17:34 Windows 7.vbox-prev
-rw-------  1 Nancy  staff  12893 Jul  9 08:51 Windows 7.vbox-tmp

/users/nancy/virtualbox VMs/Windows 7/Logs:
total 920
drwxr-xr-x+ 7 Nancy  staff     238 Jul  9 07:48 .
drwxr-xr-x+ 8 Nancy  staff     272 Jul  4 08:24 ..
-rw-r--r--@ 1 Nancy  staff    6148 Jul  4 11:35 .DS_Store
-rw-------  1 Nancy  staff   99062 Jul  9 08:51 VBox.log
-rw-r--r--+ 1 Nancy  staff  119587 Jul  2 17:34 VBox.log.1
-rw-r--r--+ 1 Nancy  staff  131854 Jul  2 14:07 VBox.log.2
-rw-r--r--+ 1 Nancy  staff  100410 Jul  2 13:28 VBox.log.3

/users/nancy/virtualbox VMs/Windows 7/Snapshots:
total 0
drwxr-xr-x+ 2 Nancy  staff   68 Jul  9 08:51 .
drwxr-xr-x+ 8 Nancy  staff  272 Jul  4 08:24 ..
iMac:~ Nancy$ 

[socratis]

All the permissions seem more than adequate. With the VM shut down (not paused, not saved state, fully shut down), issue the command:

   rm /Users/Nancy/VirtualBox\ VMs/Windows\ 7/Windows\ 7.vbox-tmp

[sbrown02]

I ran the command and it executed fine. Tried it again with the same error. Should I delete the "Windows 7.vbox-tmp" file? I should also add, after I get the error and click "Ok" the VM won't close. I have to force quite to get it to close. Not sure if that info helps but sharing just the same.

Any other thoughts?

Again, thanks for your help.

[socratis]

Should I delete the "Windows 7.vbox-tmp" file?

What do you mean? That's what the command I gave you was supposed to do!

Are you Nancy or are you Steve when you're running the command? Are there more than one users? Are you running someone else's VM?

[sbrown02]

Yes, I am Steven (the husband) and I'm logged in to my wife's account (Nancy). The iMac is a family shared computer, however my wife is the only one that needs to use a VM because of an old windows program she still uses from time to time. Both her account and mine have Admin privileges. When I ran the terminal command I was logged in as Nancy. Not sure why but it didn't delete the TMP file.

That said, I believe I solved the problem. I'll explain.

Upon further investigation, I realized there are two instances of the VM in two different folder locations (one within Nancy and another in another named folder) on the drive but only one had the actual VDI file located with it and it was not the one within the Nancy folder structure. When I used the other VBOX file from the other location it works as it should, but when using the one under Nancy I get the shutdown error. I'm going to delete the VM folder under Nancy and simply use the one that works. I believe they were both referencing the same VDI file which is probably why the system wouldn't save the TMP file correctly within Nancy. Or at least that's my hypothesis.

Thanks for you help.