v7.2.6 has boot issues with RHEL/OL 9

[Tonatiuh]

VBox: Version 7.2.6 r172322
Host: Ubunutu 22
Guests: Oracle Linux 9.6 / 9.7

After I updated my old VBox (6.x) to last version, I started my VMs to update the VBox Guest Additions to every single VM, every single VM with Guest OS Oracle Linux 9.6 / 9.7 have very ugly issues to start. The boot process, sometimes (the lower number of cases) start normally, but sometimes (the higher number of cases) it stuck during the booting process.

When the issues happen, the process is super slow until "Stopped Apply Kernel Variables". After that it shows several type of messages normally making reference to "rcu". And it has been stuck on same situation for more than 3 hours. Actually it seems it would be into that situation forever. But I send a "power-off" signal. Sometimes a new boot works well, sometimes this behavior repeated several times.

Linux filesystems are specially sensitive to power-off events, and this behavior will end up in losing the VM sooner or later.

A Windows VM works perfectly.

Any idea to fix this bug?

I've seen several users reporting these issues in booting RHEL/OL Guest OSs, who have fixed the issue downgrading to VBox v7.1.
That's my next step but, I wanted to ask for a fix into current version, prior to downgrade.

[joelnielsen]

This looks like a known compatibility issue between newer VirtualBox 7.2.x and certain RHEL/Oracle Linux kernels, especially after updating Guest Additions. The “rcu” stalls during boot usually point to kernel/guest additions conflicts.

You could try booting with a different kernel (if available), or reinstalling Guest Additions in safe mode/text mode to see if it stabilizes. Otherwise, many users have reported that downgrading to VirtualBox 7.1 is currently the most reliable workaround until a fix is released.

[Tonatiuh]

Thanks for your reply Joe.

I found the RCA. It was an human mistake.

I had an older VBox version and when I uninstalled it, I didn't do it completely. Something from the older version was still remaining right there. After I properly uninstalled the older version, everything is working flawlessly.

Best regards,
Ulises