VMs don't run after update

[Bicycle]

I just updated to 5.2.8 and none of my VMs will run anymore but they were running fine on 5.2.6 except for USB as previously noted. I hope I don't have to rebuild them all as I have had to do on occasion after previous updates. I am using a Mac Mini server running 10.13.3. The VMs I use are Linux Mint, openSuSE LEAP, Centos, and Windows 7.

I can see then start to boot but they never get to the login screen and Activity Monitor says Virtual Box is using 200% of the CPU ( 2 of my 4 cores are pegged) indefinitely.

[andyp73]

I just updated to 5.2.8 and none of my VMs will run anymore

Saying they won't run is a sweeping statement - I suspect that they do run up to a point before they fail. As we aren't sat in front of your computer you are going to need to provide the log file (zipped of course) from a failed session. Start the VM, run it until it does whatever it does that is incorrect, shut it down, post the log.

-Andy.

[Bicycle]

I can't get to the logs on the VM because it never comes up far enough to get logged in. I see the start screen, for example I see the green diamonds as SuSE is starting but then the screen goes black and stays that way. The mac Activity Monitor shows VirtualBox running 206% + or - a tiny bit of the cpu for close to 8 hours straight before I forcefully shut it down.

There are 4 virtual box logs timestamped about a year ago apparently when I created the VM showing the same date and time and the version as 5.1.14. I have run a number of VirtualBox versions since then so I don't know why the logs only show when I created them.

[andyp73]

As you say all the logs, including those from yesterday have the 5.1.14 version stamp in them. Are you sure the install of 5.2.8 (and the previous one of 5.2.6 ran OK?

If you look at the version in the VirtualBox Manger GUI or run "vboxmanage --version" in a terminal window what does it report?

-Andy.

[Bicycle]

5.2.6 ran fine except that I couldn't get anything but USB 1.1 to work even with the extensions installed. When I look at the about box it claims I am running 5.2.8.

Vboxmanage says "5.2.8r121009"

[Bicycle]

So am I going to have to rebuild all my VM's from scratch?

[mpack]

Look, in future please provide one log, not 8. I will only bother looking at the first one.

In that, your problem looks quite straightforward, and nothing to do with VirtualBox version (though different versions may have different tipping points): you don't have the available RAM you've configured for the guest. Horrifically so. On the other hand the graphics RAM allocation is extremely weak. Are you ignoring warnings about this in the settings dialog?

00:00:07.660537 Host RAM: 8192MB (8.0GB) total, 2866MB (2.7GB) available
...
00:00:08.422588 RamSize <integer> = 0x0000000100000000 (4 294 967 296, 4 096 MB, 4 GB)
00:00:08.423142 VRamSize <integer> = 0x0000000001000000 (16 777 216, 16 MB)

At least you're not overcommitting cores too.

[Bicycle]

I cut the ram down to 3072 more than a year ago after an update from Apple in January 2017 that vastly increased the amount of memory used in caches (and not redeemable by apps). It was recently running fine on 5.2.6 with that amount of ram. Fine, I cut it back further to 2.5GB (2560MB) and still get the same result.

And another anomaly showed up. This morning it showed openSuSE LEAP in the list of VM's but wouldn't show Linux Mint but now just a few hours later it shows Linux Mint but not openSuSE LEAP.!? I didn't reboot or do anything else that I would expect to cause a change like that. Linux Mint 18.3 also shows the bootup screen but then goes black and CPU's pegged. AND the logs haven't changed and still show dates and versions from a year ago.

If you only want 1 log please say so. There ALWAYS seem to be 4 but they all seem to be substantially the same as far as I can tell. I didn't know what you wanted when you asked for the logs.

PS. I am taking the amount of graphics ram as suggested by VirtualBox, no more, no less and it was happy on 5.2.6. I am not doing any graphics apps other than the window manager.

[socratis]

It was recently running fine on 5.2.6 with that amount of ram.

5.2.6 or 15.4.10 doesn't matter. The amount of available host RAM doesn't depend on your VirtualBox version. So, if today you have too many YouTube tabs open on too many browsers, you might have a problem, which won't be there tomorrow.

May I suggest a couple of applications, so that you know what's available on your system at any given time? What I do, is to have several monitor tools running at all times. Your preference may vary, but you can use either of them (I use all of them concurrently):

• MenuMeters (for OSX > 10.10).
• X Resource Graph.
• Memory Monitor.
• Built-in Activity monitor.

If you only want 1 log please say so. There ALWAYS seem to be 4

The default is 4 logs, from the last 4 runs, see the dates. We're interested in a complete VM run (startup/error/shutdown) where you see the error.

[Bicycle]

I've rebuilt the SuSE VM 5 times in the last few days. It seems to run fine after install from the 42.3 LEAP iso from distrowatch. Still seems to run after updating the 6 updates that are required before any other updates can be done and still runs after 'needed updates' are installed but then I get the same behavior of black screen and pegged cpus after installing 'recommended' updates. Installing 1 at 1 time I found out that the xorg 'recommended' updates will not install and in fact crash the updater. BUT all the updates install fine on a physical machine (Core 2 Duo).

AND still after all that the logs show the date and version from last year. Yes I checked the permissions.

[socratis]

AND still after all that the logs show the date and version from last year. Yes I checked the permissions.

Then I suggest you take a second, third and fourth look at your VirtualBox installation. Uninstall it, clean up your environment, obviously without touching your VMs or their directories.

Find the "/Users/<you>/Library/VirtualBox/VirtualBox.xml" file. ZIP it and attach it.

[Bicycle]

Should I delete the stuff in ~/Library/Virtualbox also before I reinstall? Should I delete the log files in the directories with the VM's?