VM is "inaccessible"

Discussions related to using VirtualBox on Linux hosts.
gamblor01
Posts: 13
Joined: 28. May 2010, 00:40
Primary OS: Ubuntu other
VBox Version: OSE Debian
Guest OSses: Windows 7 and XP

VM is "inaccessible"

Post by gamblor01 »

Hi all,

I'm running vbox 4.0.8 on Ubuntu 11.04 (64-bit). Things have generally been nice and smooth for some time, but I have recently run into an issue with my Windows 7 (64-bit) VM. I think it happened during the upgrade from 4.0.6 to 4.0.8 but I'm not entirely certain.

Every time I stop the VM or try to save its state, it becomes inaccessible. I have to remove the VM from the list, delete the .vbox file, and then recreate the VM using the same .vdi file and then everything works great until I power it down or try to save state again (not snapshot, just close the VM and save state).

Here is the message that I get in vbox manager. Note that I cannot access the settings or do anything except read this message or delete the machine:
PCDATA invalid Char value 3.
Location: '/home/bmayes/VirtualBox VMs/bmayes-win7vm/bmayes-win7vm.vbox', line 144 (3), column 36.
/home/vbox/vbox-4.0.8/src/VBox/Main/src-server/MachineImpl.cpp[679] (nsresult Machine::registeredInit()).
Result Code:
NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005)
Component:
VirtualBox
Interface:
IVirtualBox {d2de270c-1d4b-4c9e-843f-bbb9b47269ff}

Line 144 column 36 doesn't look too suspicious -- it's the 'a' character in /VirtualBox but the value attribute of this tag has a weird ^C character in it. Maybe that is what is causing this?

Code: Select all

        <GuestProperty name="/VirtualBox/GuestAdd/VersionEx" value="d^C" timestamp="1305835182446664000" flags=""/>
I find it suspicious that it says invalid char value 3. I opened up the file with a hex editor and the 36th character is hex 61 (which is ASCII 'a') so it's not like there is some end of text character there erroneously.

I tried to look through VBox.log but didn't see much. What do I need to do to get this problem resolved? I searched on google (which brought me to these forums) and didn't find anything that resolved the issue yet. This is a VM I use to do development/debugging for the app I work on and it's getting a little old to recreate the machine all the time. It generally also complains that I need to reactivate Windows again once it starts up. I even had to call the automated Microsoft system last time and punch in a billion numbers just to get through activation. Ugh...

For what it's worth, my 2 other VMs (Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit and Windows XP 32-bit) don't exhibit this behavior -- only the Windows 7 VM does.
Perryg
Site Moderator
Posts: 34369
Joined: 6. Sep 2008, 22:55
Primary OS: Linux other
VBox Version: OSE self-compiled
Guest OSses: *NIX

Re: VM is "inaccessible"

Post by Perryg »

Edit bmayes-win7vm.vbox and comment out the line and see if you can proceed.
Make a backup of the file first to be safe.
This seems to be happening when you leave the guest additions mounted in the guest when updating. Since the previous guest additions will be deleted is sees this as a missing property.
gamblor01
Posts: 13
Joined: 28. May 2010, 00:40
Primary OS: Ubuntu other
VBox Version: OSE Debian
Guest OSses: Windows 7 and XP

Re: VM is "inaccessible"

Post by gamblor01 »

Thanks for the quick reply! I commented out the line and then tried to refresh the machine in vbox manager but it doesn't do any good. Are you saying that I should recreate the VM (to get a fresh .vbox file) and then comment it out? Also, if it is truly the fact that additions remains mounted, then I wonder why the XP machine doesn't exhibit this behavior. I just checked the settings for it and it has VBoxGuestAddtions.iso mounted on the IDE Secondary Master under the Storage page. I certainly haven't changed the settings recently.
Perryg
Site Moderator
Posts: 34369
Joined: 6. Sep 2008, 22:55
Primary OS: Linux other
VBox Version: OSE self-compiled
Guest OSses: *NIX

Re: VM is "inaccessible"

Post by Perryg »

AFAIK You will need to shut down VirtualBox to be able to edit and it take. As for why it is not exactly known yet but one theory I have is that updating with a saved state and guest additions being left mounted might be causing this. If let's say you do not have the machine in a saved state it could be why it does not effect the control file. Any input you can give to this would be appreciated.
gamblor01
Posts: 13
Joined: 28. May 2010, 00:40
Primary OS: Ubuntu other
VBox Version: OSE Debian
Guest OSses: Windows 7 and XP

Re: VM is "inaccessible"

Post by gamblor01 »

I'm not sure what state it is in right now. I recreated the machine and started it just now. Then I clicked "Shutdown" from the start menu and it showed up as "Powered Off" in the manager. That's great! Then I closed the manager and opened it again. Now it's inaccessible again. So the last thing I did was to shut it down, *not* save state. Whether it's truly shutdown right now or in some saved state limbo I can't really say.

Now what?
Perryg
Site Moderator
Posts: 34369
Joined: 6. Sep 2008, 22:55
Primary OS: Linux other
VBox Version: OSE self-compiled
Guest OSses: *NIX

Re: VM is "inaccessible"

Post by Perryg »

Now we think a bit.

Questions:
1) where does your copy of VirtualBox come from (Ubuntu or VirtualBox.org).
2) You say that you upgraded Ubuntu, did you see anything odd during the upgrade?
3) Same with VirtualBox anything seem out of the ordinary?
4) Can you post the last log file that shows you shutting down the guest (as an attachment)?
5) Post the permissions of the folder that has VirtualBox VMs.
6) Are you still in the vboxuser group (verify this please)
gamblor01
Posts: 13
Joined: 28. May 2010, 00:40
Primary OS: Ubuntu other
VBox Version: OSE Debian
Guest OSses: Windows 7 and XP

Re: VM is "inaccessible"

Post by gamblor01 »

1) where does your copy of VirtualBox come from (Ubuntu or VirtualBox.org).

I installed directly from virtualbox.org. I don't use the VirtualBox OSE package from the Ubuntu repos because the OSE version doesn't support a few things (like USB for example).


2) You say that you upgraded Ubuntu, did you see anything odd during the upgrade?

I didn't necessarily upgrade Ubuntu. I was previously running Ubuntu 10.10 on this machine. What I did was to shrink that partition to half its size with gparted, created a new partition in that space and then installed 11.04 on that new partition. I then installed VirtualBox 4.0.6 on Ubuntu 11.04, copied over the bmayes-win7vm.vdi file, and created a new VM using that image as the disk. I haven't had any problems the past few weeks with this VM. I still have the 10.10 partition which I suppose I could boot up and see if the VM still works there...


3) Same with VirtualBox anything seem out of the ordinary?

A day or two ago I upgraded from VirtualBox 4.0.6 to 4.0.8 and I feel like that is when things started going wrong. I didn't notice anything odd during the upgrade -- just ran dpkg -i on the .deb file and everything seemed fine (at first).


4) Can you post the last log file that shows you shutting down the guest (as an attachment)?

See attached.


5) Post the permissions of the folder that has VirtualBox VMs.

Code: Select all

VirtualBox VMs/:
total 12
drwxr-xr-x 4 bmayes bmayes 4096 2011-05-20 11:47 bmayes-win7vm
drwxr-xr-x 4 bmayes bmayes 4096 2011-05-11 14:38 Ubuntu64
drwxr-xr-x 4 bmayes bmayes 4096 2011-05-20 11:23 WinXP

VirtualBox VMs/bmayes-win7vm:
total 28969240
-rw------- 1 bmayes bmayes       11304 2011-05-20 11:47 bmayes-win7vm.vbox
-rw------- 1 bmayes bmayes       11235 2011-05-20 11:47 bmayes-win7vm.vbox-prev
-rw------- 1 bmayes bmayes 29664464896 2011-05-20 11:47 bmayes-win7vm.vdi
drwxr-xr-x 2 bmayes bmayes        4096 2011-05-20 11:44 Logs
drwxr-xr-x 2 bmayes bmayes        4096 2011-05-19 17:51 Snapshots

VirtualBox VMs/bmayes-win7vm/Logs:
total 304
-rw------- 1 bmayes bmayes 77759 2011-05-20 11:47 VBox.log
-rw------- 1 bmayes bmayes 78747 2011-05-20 10:35 VBox.log.1
-rw------- 1 bmayes bmayes 72956 2011-05-20 10:24 VBox.log.2
-rw------- 1 bmayes bmayes 77595 2011-05-19 17:51 VBox.log.3

VirtualBox VMs/bmayes-win7vm/Snapshots:
total 971920
-rw------- 1 bmayes bmayes 995238912 2011-05-19 17:51 {bc9b0c96-af74-47f8-a8a6-47014e1e2e61}.sav

VirtualBox VMs/Ubuntu64:
total 5625072
drwxr-xr-x 2 bmayes bmayes       4096 2011-05-11 14:38 Logs
drwxr-xr-x 2 bmayes bmayes       4096 2011-04-19 12:45 Snapshots
-rw------- 1 bmayes bmayes       8583 2011-05-11 14:38 Ubuntu64.vbox
-rw------- 1 bmayes bmayes      17480 2011-04-26 12:44 Ubuntu64.vbox.old
-rw------- 1 bmayes bmayes       8515 2011-05-11 14:38 Ubuntu64.vbox-prev
-rw------- 1 bmayes bmayes      17480 2011-04-26 12:44 Ubuntu64.vbox-prev.old
-rw------- 1 bmayes bmayes 5759995904 2011-05-11 14:38 Ubuntu64.vdi

VirtualBox VMs/Ubuntu64/Logs:
total 320
-rw------- 1 bmayes bmayes 78600 2011-05-11 14:38 VBox.log
-rw------- 1 bmayes bmayes 79450 2011-04-26 12:44 VBox.log.1
-rw------- 1 bmayes bmayes 79538 2011-04-26 11:25 VBox.log.2
-rw------- 1 bmayes bmayes 79343 2011-04-21 13:13 VBox.log.3

VirtualBox VMs/Ubuntu64/Snapshots:
total 2842692
-rw------- 1 bmayes bmayes  725506708 2011-04-11 14:38 {5b799dec-bc5e-4aea-83c0-ede1a532688d}.sav
-rw------- 1 bmayes bmayes 2185400320 2011-04-26 12:44 {bd662df3-164b-4c43-ae64-9e58e59efdc8}.vdi

VirtualBox VMs/WinXP:
total 5634208
drwxr-xr-x 2 bmayes bmayes       4096 2011-05-20 10:57 Logs
drwxr-xr-x 2 bmayes bmayes       4096 2011-05-20 11:23 Snapshots
-rw------- 1 bmayes bmayes      11898 2011-05-20 11:23 WinXP.vbox
-rw------- 1 bmayes bmayes      11898 2011-05-20 11:23 WinXP.vbox-prev
-rw------- 1 bmayes bmayes 5769392128 2011-05-20 11:23 WinXP.vdi

VirtualBox VMs/WinXP/Logs:
total 300
-rw------- 1 bmayes bmayes 75424 2011-05-20 11:23 VBox.log
-rw------- 1 bmayes bmayes 73527 2011-05-20 10:43 VBox.log.1
-rw------- 1 bmayes bmayes 74761 2011-05-20 10:38 VBox.log.2
-rw------- 1 bmayes bmayes 75446 2011-05-19 18:09 VBox.log.3

VirtualBox VMs/WinXP/Snapshots:
total 501596
-rw------- 1 bmayes bmayes 513627382 2011-05-20 11:23 {5326fe88-a2f8-4239-b4d2-df70ac1ddcae}.sav


6) Are you still in the vboxuser group (verify this please)

Sure am:

Code: Select all

$ id
uid=1000(bmayes) gid=1000(bmayes) groups=1000(bmayes),4(adm),20(dialout),24(cdrom),46(plugdev),112(lpadmin),120(admin),122(sambashare),124(vboxusers)
Attachments
VBox.log
(75.94 KiB) Downloaded 73 times
Perryg
Site Moderator
Posts: 34369
Joined: 6. Sep 2008, 22:55
Primary OS: Linux other
VBox Version: OSE self-compiled
Guest OSses: *NIX

Re: VM is "inaccessible"

Post by Perryg »

can you compare the permissions of the following with you 10.10 permissions?

Code: Select all

VirtualBox VMs/bmayes-win7vm:
total 28969240
-rw------- 1 bmayes bmayes       11304 2011-05-20 11:47 bmayes-win7vm.vbox
-rw------- 1 bmayes bmayes       11235 2011-05-20 11:47 bmayes-win7vm.vbox-prev
-rw------- 1 bmayes bmayes 29664464896 2011-05-20 11:47 bmayes-win7vm.vdi
drwxr-xr-x 2 bmayes bmayes        4096 2011-05-20 11:44 Logs
drwxr-xr-x 2 bmayes bmayes        4096 2011-05-19 17:51 Snapshots
gamblor01
Posts: 13
Joined: 28. May 2010, 00:40
Primary OS: Ubuntu other
VBox Version: OSE Debian
Guest OSses: Windows 7 and XP

Re: VM is "inaccessible"

Post by gamblor01 »

Looks to be identical...

Code: Select all

bmayes@bmayes-dt:/media/sda1/home/bmayes/VirtualBox VMs/bmayes-win7vm$ ls -l
total 28857640
-rw------- 1 bmayes bmayes       12798 2011-05-10 10:41 bmayes-win7vm.vbox
-rw------- 1 bmayes bmayes       12798 2011-05-10 10:41 bmayes-win7vm.vbox-prev
-rw------- 1 bmayes bmayes 29550170112 2011-05-10 10:41 bmayes-win7vm.vdi
drwxr-xr-x 2 bmayes bmayes        4096 2011-05-10 08:56 Logs
drwxr-xr-x 2 bmayes bmayes        4096 2011-05-10 10:41 Snapshots
Perryg
Site Moderator
Posts: 34369
Joined: 6. Sep 2008, 22:55
Primary OS: Linux other
VBox Version: OSE self-compiled
Guest OSses: *NIX

Re: VM is "inaccessible"

Post by Perryg »

This sure smells like permissions somehow.

Post the VirtualBox.xml and the *.vbox of the guest (as attachments please)
gamblor01
Posts: 13
Joined: 28. May 2010, 00:40
Primary OS: Ubuntu other
VBox Version: OSE Debian
Guest OSses: Windows 7 and XP

Re: VM is "inaccessible"

Post by gamblor01 »

Attached. And thanks for your persistence today! Whether I get this solved or just blast the machine and reinstall I still really appreciate the help.
Attachments
Virtualbox.xml.txt
(2.72 KiB) Downloaded 161 times
bmayes-win7vm.vbox.txt
(11.64 KiB) Downloaded 142 times
Perryg
Site Moderator
Posts: 34369
Joined: 6. Sep 2008, 22:55
Primary OS: Linux other
VBox Version: OSE self-compiled
Guest OSses: *NIX

Re: VM is "inaccessible"

Post by Perryg »

OK let's try this then.
Shut down VirtualBox. Copy this file into the proper folder and rename it removing the .txt
Start VirtualBox and see what happens.
bmayes-win7vm.vbox.txt
(11.64 KiB) Downloaded 417 times
gamblor01
Posts: 13
Joined: 28. May 2010, 00:40
Primary OS: Ubuntu other
VBox Version: OSE Debian
Guest OSses: Windows 7 and XP

Re: VM is "inaccessible"

Post by gamblor01 »

I thought that weird character may have actually been the problem, but I didn't understand why it was giving me the wrong column number. In any case, I think that swapping in that file has fixed the problem -- I have stopped/started/saved the thing probably at least a dozen times now and still haven't run into the problem again. I have deleted that .vbox file so many times though, that VirtualBox itself must be generating a bogus file? So I guess by giving it a legitimate file and not letting it create another one, hopefully the problem is resolved.

Why it was generating a bogus file I have no idea. Seems to be working now though...thank you!
jaw1959
Posts: 1
Joined: 22. May 2011, 20:34
Primary OS: Ubuntu other
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Windows Vista 64 Home Premium bit

Re: VM is "inaccessible"

Post by jaw1959 »

I'm having a similar problem. My host machine is running Ubuntu 11.04 AMD64, and I'm running Windows Vista Home Premium (64 bit) as a guest. I am able to run normally, and reboot the guest OS just fine, until I reboot the host machine, and I see the "inaccessilble..." error.

I was able to use the workaround suggested by the OP but that requires setting up the VM again, which I'd rather not do.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

thanks,

josh
dadaj
Posts: 3
Joined: 23. May 2011, 04:53
Primary OS: Ubuntu other
VBox Version: OSE other
Guest OSses: win7

Re: VM is "inaccessible"

Post by dadaj »

jaw1959 wrote:I'm having a similar problem. My host machine is running Ubuntu 11.04 AMD64, and I'm running Windows Vista Home Premium (64 bit) as a guest. I am able to run normally, and reboot the guest OS just fine, until I reboot the host machine, and I see the "inaccessilble..." error.

I was able to use the workaround suggested by the OP but that requires setting up the VM again, which I'd rather not do.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

thanks,

josh
The problem of inaccessible also occur in Ubuntu LTS 10.04 but it only affected those VM machine created in other system like windows 7 and a backup created by VboxManage clonevdi command line. The VM machine created by the copy of VirtualBox repository run smoothly after Ubuntu restarted. And the problem is occurred after Guess additions upgraded to 4.0.8 from lower version 4.0.4 and 4.0.6.
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