Fedora guest, black screen after install

[lelegard]

Hi,

It seems a recurring issue here for years without clear solution. What the hell is the problem with Fedora on VBox?

Installed VBox 7.0.14 on a new PC, 14 cores, 32 GB, Windows 11. Installed 14 VM, 10 distinct Linux distros, 4 distinct BSD distros. This a dev and test system for an open source project. All VM work correctly, installation, reboot, application compilation and test.

Except Fedora. Installed from Fedora-Workstation-Live-x86_64-39-1.5.iso. The installation went well (booting from the live CD worked). During the reboot on the installed system, the screen remains black.

Some observations:
- VM mem: 8 GB
- Initially 6 processors (as all other VM), then tried with 1 (same result)
- The VM is alive because I can ping it from the host on the host-only interface (but no SSH server so far to log in)
- It seems a display issue with Gnome probably.

The problem is that the Fedora installation process is minimal. You can only enter the language, keyboard and destination disk. Everything else is probably configured after the initial reboot. I haven't seen any possibility to tweak the installation or specify to install the SSH server.

Any new idea?

[scottgus1]

I got the Fedora-Workstation-Live-x86_64-39-1.5.iso from https://fedoraproject.org/workstation/download/ . I made a new VM on Virtualbox 7.0.10 (test PC was a tad out of date). I called the VM "Fedora 39", set it to use 2 processors and 2GB RAM. Then I increased the video RAM to the max 128GB. I started and installed the OS, rebooted it, and it wen to the desktop just fine. I was able to browse the web using the built-in Firefox.

I then upgraded to 7.0.14 and restarted the VM. Again it went to the desktop, opened Firefox and got on the web.

The VM reported it was using 7.0.10's Guest Additions. I am not skilled enough in Linux to go through uninstalling and upgrading GAs just now. But it appears you didn't make it to the first desktop.

I suggest increasing the video RAM to max 128MB.

If this does not work, please provide a log:

Please start the VM from full normal shutdown, not save-state. Run until you see the problem happen, then shut down the VM from within the VM's OS if possible. If not possible, close the Virtualbox window for the VM with the Power Off option set.

Right-click the VM in the main Virtualbox window's VM list, choose Show in Explorer/Finder/File Manager. In the "Logs" subfolder, zip the VM's "vbox.log", and post the zip file, using the forum's Attachments tab. (Configure your host OS to show all extensions so you can find the "vbox.log", not "vbox.log.1", etc.)

[c0000007]

I am using 7.0.14 and have Fedora 39 running as guest. The "Graphic Controller" under "Display" settings for Fedora needs to be "VMSVGA". Whether "Enable 3D Acceleration" is ticked doesn't matter (see below).

You must have VirtualBox guest addon installed.

For my current Fedora the above works. However, vboxvideo is not loaded.

$ lsmod | grep vbox
vboxsf 49152 1
vboxguest 53248 6 vboxsf


dmesg reported:

...
Feb 07 08:33:06 fedora kernel: vmwgfx 0000:00:02.0: [drm] *ERROR* vmwgfx seems to be running on an unsupported hypervisor.
Feb 07 08:33:06 fedora kernel: vmwgfx 0000:00:02.0: [drm] *ERROR* This configuration is likely broken.
Feb 07 08:33:06 fedora kernel: vmwgfx 0000:00:02.0: [drm] *ERROR* Please switch to a supported graphics device to avoid problems.
...


My VBox.log is free of error except:

...
00:00:23.888459 VMMDev: Guest Log: 00:33:14.004694 DrmResizeThread VBoxDRMClient: Error: unable to validate screen layout: first monitor is not allowed to be disa00:33:14.005360 DrmResizeThread VBoxDRMClient: Error: displays layout is invalid, will not notify guest driver, rc=VERR_INVALID00:33:14.005968 DrmResizeThread VBoxDRMClient: Error: Failed to push display change as requested by host, rc=VERR_INVALID_PARAM00:33:14.016070 main VBoxService 7.0.14_Fedora r161095 (verbosity: 0) linux.amd64 (Jan 16 2024 00:00:00) release log
...


Despite the error messages above, both the (win11) host and guest are running smooth. I tried playing HD video in the guest and did not experience any issue. But I think there's still compatibility issues between drivers that cause vboxvideo module failed to load in the guest.

[lelegard]

I got it working again "by accident", meaning no other reason than maybe rebooting the Windows host later.

Then, I got other errors in that Fedora VM. During the boot, before Gnome starts, I got "CPU soft lockup" errors. Rebooting the VM repeatedly resulted in the same error. Until I reboot the host.

I noticed that these errors typically appear after booting and shutting down other VM's or while booting two VM's simulateously (two successive "VBoxManage startvm" in a script).

In all cases, these errors are seen on the Fedora VM only. Not on any other VM (10 Linux distros, 4 BSD distros).

BTW, to answer a previous suggestion, the video memory was set to 128 MB from the beginning on all my VM's (to make sure that all my VM's are equivalent, I use a shell script with VBoxManage commands to create them).

This is a bit annoying. I have a script which boots VM's, build software, fetch the built packages, shut down the VM. To take advantage of the amount of memory and CPU cores, two VM's run simultaneously (three could be ok I think). If one VM cannot reliably boot, it jeopardizes the whole process.

[lelegard]

I now have a more precise view of the causes. The boot hang occurs when starting the Fedora and Redhat VM's using the command line in headless mode. Since this is a different view of the problem, I opened the new topic 111063. Discussion to be continued there.

[squig]

I was experiencing this issue only while using Fedora as well, and have been a bit stumped this week. Thankfully I found a solution that has been working for me, albeit by complete accident.

Occasionally while trying to install fedora the display would partially work, but then as soon as I got to the installation screen or start the installation, it would cause the screen to go black and basically remain that way until restarting the VM. The issue also occur immediately after I resized the window by either dragging from the corner or one of the side borders.

I initially thought I wasn't provisioning enough resources (2 cores, 4GB ram 40GB VHD space). Adjusting didn't really seem to make a difference.

Queue today... while connected to a virtual machine, the screen was black, but I was able to fix it by simply changing the resolution of virtual screen 1. Changing it to basically anything seems to have fixed the issue while installing and downstream for this virtual machine. Not only this, no matter what I set it to after adjusting it initially, it seems to work.

I haven't really looked into the issue beyond this yet, but wanted to provide a response in-case the issue is similar for you.

Edit: continuing on the new thread