Losing VBox display of Ubuntu Guest after idle

[cburton]

Hey all, I'm running an Ubuntu 10.04 guest inside WinXP Pro at work. Lately I have come back to my desktop to find that something has gone awry.

Initially I thought the system was just freezing/crashing, but before I left last night I had a few tasks set to run over night, and as I use Host-F to back out into WinXP and lock my work station I lost the display inside the guest window. I figure it was just doing a few things and lagging on the screen update, so I thought nothing of it and went home. I come back this morning to find that I still don't have my display, which is what it looked like when I would come in before and thought I had crashed.

I tried Ctrl-Alt-F5 in the guest to see if maybe it was a X issue, and though the working area inside the vbox window changed size to fit what should be a terminal window, I still had no display. I then tried blindly logging in and forcing a reboot that way (sending an ACPI shutdown doesn't work) which did work and leads me to believe that there is an issue with the display from vbox(?). At first I thought the keyboard wasn't working, but I took a snapshot when I had the terminal window up and on the details of the snapshot I could see the screen shot of what I was trying to do clear as day.

Here are my desktop specs:
OS: WinXP Pro SP3
CPU: Core2Duo 2.66GHz
Ram: 2GB
HD: 250 GB
Video: ATI Radeon X300/X550/X1050 with 512 GB Ram

Here are my virtual machine specs:
General
Name: Ubuntu_New
OS Type: Ubuntu

System
Base Memory: 896 MB
Processor(s): 2
Boot Order: CD/DVD-ROM, Hard Disk
VT-x/AMD-V: Enabled
Nested Paging: Disabled

Display
Video Memory: 85 MB
3D Acceleration: Enabled
2D Video Acceleration: Disabled
Remote Display Server: Disabled

Storage
IDE Controller
IDE Secondary Master (CD/DVD): VBoxGuestAdditions.iso (31.95 MB)
SATA Controller
SATA Port 0: Ubuntu_New.vdi (Normal, 100.00 GB)

Audio
Host Driver: Windows DirectSound
Controller: ICH AC97

Network
Adapter 1: Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop (Bridged adapter, Marvell Yukon 88E8056 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller)

Serial Ports
Disabled

USB
Device Filters: 0 (0 active)

Shared Folders
Shared Folders: 2

[Perryg]

Make sure that the guest is not using a screen saver and that the power management function is shut off. Let the host control it.
Also you say you lock the host, but is it set to power down the HDD or anything like that?
Also are you using desktop effects in the guest?

[cburton]

Make sure that the guest is not using a screen saver and that the power management function is shut off. Let the host control it.
Also you say you lock the host, but is it set to power down the HDD or anything like that?
Also are you using desktop effects in the guest?

The Ubuntu guest was set to shut off display after 30 minutes, so that's now set to Never. If this were the cause, why would i have seen the issue when still using the computer yesterday evening? Either way a good idea to change the setting. The host is set only to start up the screen saver and then shut off the display after 30 mins, never turns off the hard disk. I had the Visual Effects set to Normal, I've turn that Off as well.

I was wondering if I might be having an issue because i assigned two virtual CPUs? I've dropped down to one for now just in case.

[Perryg]

I don't have issues with the number of CPU's but the others I mentioned have been a particular thorn in my side early on in a virtualizer.
I actually run Ubuntu seamless in a Windows host and usually go between Windows updates before rebooting. The desktop effects are a real issue in seamless mode but full screen I have not had a real problem, just something to check. Hopefully this will help/fix your problem until the virtualizer environment matures more and everything works out of the box.

[cburton]

Thanks for your help! I also run in seamless mode (I like to pretend Windows isn't there), so maybe turning off the effects will be the solution.