Blank VirtualBox OSE screen on startup

[coptang]

Host OS: Gentoo, KDE 3.5

After a recent power failure, whenever I start VirtualBox, the manager window (the one that lists VM's, settings etc) is completely blank. If I try to close the window it just hangs for a bit until KDE prompts me to terminate it. The window is resizeable, will minimise to taskbar etc but there's just nothing in it.

I tried renaming the main xml settings file but that just made it prompt me for registration when I start it (with a similarly blank window).

Nothing in /var/log/messages, not sure where else to look for VirtualBox?

Any suggestions gratefully appreciated.

[coptang]

Bump on this as I'm still stuck. Have tried re-installing from portage. I have the vboxnetflt and vboxdrv modules loaded. I'm stumped.

An strace as root shows a Segfault but nothing obviously useful.

Anyone have tips on how I can debug this to find the problem please? Does it look like something that I should be raising downstream with gentoo?

[Sasquatch]

It might be indeed something to address to Gentoo Portage maintainer. Please remove VB, download the .run file from the website and install that. See if that gives any issues.

[coptang]

Got it!

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-76 ... albox.html

If restarting VirtualBox does not solve the GUI display problem, then edit ~/.VirtualBox/VirtualBox.xml and set GUI/UpdateDate to "never":

Code: Select all

<ExtraDataItem name="GUI/UpdateDate" value="never"/>

EDIT: Sorry, missed your post in my excitement Thank you for the advice.