Ubuntu in VB either freezes or leads to a memory error

[Mawn19]

Hello all,

well, I was trying during 3 days to install correctly Ubuntu "ubuntu-24.04-desktop-amd64.iso" within VirtualBox "VirtualBox-7.0.18-162988-Win" + "Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-7.0.18". No success!!

I followed the steps in videos on youtube, tutorials by googling...

I got issues from not being able to finish the install, with crushes and different configs (memory, CPUs,...Display Enabling 3D Acceleration). Even tried VirtualBox 6.

My actual issue, after the installation of Ubuntu is complete and restarted, is maybe related to graphics.

So, 2 scenarios:

- With Extended feature NOT CHECKED Enable 3D Acceleration: the VM freezes on the first stage, where I should put my password, or a bit after this. Then I need to turn the VM off; OR
- With Extended feature CHECKED Enable 3D Acceleration: Everything works good, except when I click a folder Icon in the menu in Ubuntu or the Guest Additions CD icon , so I get the following error (See attachments).

BTW, I tried a lot of things, like (sfc /scannow, and more)

Let me know please if I need to share any log!

Could you please afford any support?
Thank you so much in advance,
Regards

[rfm]

This is in the wrong topic, should be Linux Guests or Windows Hosts but I can't see how to move it (perhaps needs a forum admin?)

Anyway, this same problem just started happening to me on Windows 11 host with a Ubuntu 24.04 VM I had installed quite some time ago. Virtualbox 7.0.18, not updated recently, nor had I updated the guest, which had been in a saved state for a while.

I did install some updated drivers in Windows (from my motherboard manufacturer), I suppose that might have had some effect? I'll see if I can restore from a save point and see.) (Later: couldn't restore, as usual.)

I'm attaching a log from an execution which hung; closing the VM window eventually got the VM to "Aborted".

It may be display-related, as my Xubuntu 24.04 VM on the same host continues to run just fine. The major difference is it uses X.org while Ubuntu uses Wayland, so perhaps something in the Wayland display driver is tickling a bug in the Virtualbox display adapter.

[rfm]

I tried changing the VM display adapter to the old VboxSVGA (disabled 3D acceleration, as I think that's not even supposed to work) and it seems to be working fine now. So I guess the problem is in the VMSVGA code.

[rfm]

I'm beginning to think the problem was a bad Ubuntu update that has now been fixed. I tried installing a fresh Ubuntu 24.04 from the ISO with networking turned off, so it couldn't apply updates while installing. That install worked fine. I then tried updating it to the latest, expecting it to break. It didn't. I then booted the old broken installation in console (non graphical mode) which worked, although there were some nasty looking kernel messages about starvation, etc. In console mode I updated the broken system to the latest, and now it seems to work fine. Now, whatever bad code in Ubuntu shouldn't have been able to abort the VM, so there's still a vbox/VMSVGA problem, but since I can no longer reproduce it I don't care much.

[turcotte2]

What do you suspect was the root cause of the initial problems you encountered? Was it a specific Ubuntu update that introduced a bug, or could there have been other factors at play, such as incompatibilities with the VirtualBox (VBox) or VMSVGA drivers?

[rfm]

This is all speculation. I think no be there is a bug in the VMSVGA device emulator that causes it to crash when presented with some rare (even nonsensical) sequence of operations. Probably long-standing. Then I think there was a bad update to Ubuntu, somewhere in the compositor-kernel driver stack, that caused it to emit this poison sequence. That bad update got fixed or reverted, so it is no longer possible to reproduce the behavior.