Natty Narwhal and Virtual Box

[microfox]

Hi

I have the latest Mac version (4.0.6 r71344) of Virtual Box installed on my iMac and I have Ubuntu 10.10 installed on it. When I tried (several times) to upgrade to 11.04, every time I was asked to reboot in order for the changes to take place, Ubuntu froze at the start of the booting process.

So, I downloaded and installed version 11.04 from the Ubuntu site and burnt it to a CD. I, then, installed it through Virtual Box and it works perfectly (in a very small portion of my 21.5" screen) UNTIL I install the Virtual Box Guest Additions. Then, once again when I reboot, Ubuntu freezes at the start of the booting process.

I have tried this several times (a big hand of applause for Time Machine) with the same results.

Can anyone provide a solution to this problem (or at least a clue or two) ?

Thanks

[frank]

When does your guest freeze, can you raise the grub boot menu (hold Shift during the VBox boot logo)? Can you remove "quiet splash" from the kernel command line, how far does it boot?

You could also try to uninstall the guest additions before upgrading the guest to Natty. Btw, what you achieve with Time Machine can be achieved with VirtualBox snapshots as well

[microfox]

Thanks for your answer.

I'll try that when I get home, later today.

[microfox]

When does your guest freeze, can you raise the grub boot menu (hold Shift during the VBox boot logo)? Can you remove "quiet splash" from the kernel command line, how far does it boot?

It freezes at "checking battery state"

You could also try to uninstall the guest additions before upgrading the guest to Natty. Btw, what you achieve with Time Machine can be achieved with VirtualBox snapshots as well

Thanks for the info. It will probably be useful, at some point.

[microfox]

I have managed to get Natty Narwhal to work BUT it runs in 4-3 instead of 16-9 and Unity is not working. All I have is the "old" Gnome menu which lacks the "Administration", sub-menu which prevents me from using a bunch of options, including the Synaptic manager. When I try to add the Guest Additions, I'm stuck again to the "Ubuntu" screen (with the 5 red dots) at the booting process.

[jrevillini]

... When I try to add the Guest Additions, I'm stuck again to the "Ubuntu" screen (with the 5 red dots) at the booting process.

Ditto here - host is XP SP2. I also went into recover mode and ran dpkg to fix broken packages and was able to install a few updates, but still could not get further.

[jrevillini]

I've also uninstalled all the virtualbox-ose packages and still can't get this going. Anyone know what I can do to get past the freeze after checking battery state? It's not really a freeze because I can still switch to command-line mode, and I can see the network adapter is active.

[jrevillini]

note: i got in with this procedure but not sure if I'll have to continue to use low graphics mode:

• hold SHIFT while booting
  select latest linux kernel with recovery mode
  run dpkg to update and fix packages
  select resume normal boot
  log in
  sudo apt-get install unity-2d
  sudo shutdown -r now
  hold SHIFT during reboot
  select latest linux kernel with recovery mode
  select low-graphics mode (failSafeX I think it was called)

At least now I have the UI to try to troubleshoot further.

[jrevillini]

OK, now after installing the guest additions again from the Devices menu in VBox, I rebooted and the whole system is happy.

[microfox]

I have managed to get Natty Narwhal to work BUT it runs in 4-3 instead of 16-9 and Unity is not working. All I have is the "old" Gnome menu which lacks the "Administration", sub-menu which prevents me from using a bunch of options, including the Synaptic manager. When I try to add the Guest Additions, I'm stuck again to the "Ubuntu" screen (with the 5 red dots) at the booting process.

Now, when I try to reinstall the Guest Additions from the device menu, I get this message:

"The following X.Org/XFree86 configuration files were originally generated by
the VirtualBox Guest Additions and were not modified:

/etc/X11/xorg.conf

You may need to restart the hal service and the Window System (or just restart
the guest system) to enable the Guest Additions.

Installing graphics libraries and desktop services components ...done.
Press Return to close this window..."

Someone from VirtualBox should know what to do...right ?

[microfox]

Someone from VirtualBox should know what to do...right ?

I guess not

[Perryg]

Most of the time when I see this it is due to the hosts graphics adapter or hosts graphics drivers. IMHO, Natty is horribly written in this regards. See the Ubuntu Forum and read all the complaints about it using native installs. http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=331

I have Natty working in 2D and 3D in both 32 and 64 bit with the latest nVidia drivers but ATI seems to be struggling from what I read and nVidia older graphics are having issues as well.

[microfox]

Most of the time when I see this it is due to the hosts graphics adapter or hosts graphics drivers. IMHO, Natty is horribly written in this regards. See the Ubuntu Forum and read all the complaints about it using native installs. http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=331

I have Natty working in 2D and 3D in both 32 and 64 bit with the latest nVidia drivers but ATI seems to be struggling from what I read and nVidia older graphics are having issues as well.

Thanks for your answer.

I read quite a bit bout Natty Narwhal fixes and I installed unity2d and now I have the unity desktop. The only thing missing really is my 16-9 resolution options. All i can choose from are 4-3 options, which I really hate.

[microfox]

I have no clue what I did that was different than the previous times but I reinstalled the Guest additions from the Device menu and this time, everything seems to be working fine.

[jrevillini]

I just upgraded to the latest kernel, reinstalled guest additions, and the same *** is happening: hanging at the ubuntu screen. Trying my procedure I wrote before. Will let you know if it works. It just fixed a bunch of broken packages...