virtualbox.org

I haven't been able to upgrade to 4.2.1 because when I try it tells me there's a virtual machine still running on my system. I can find no indication of any VM running, I've tried several times, after a fresh cold boot even. Is there maybe some temp file (like acad's .dwl files or somesuch) hung up somewhere causing it to think a VM's still running?

I'm on macbook pro running OS X 10.5.8. Please halps! Thanks in advance.

EDIT: 4.1.2, not 4.2.1. I didn't even know I was dyslexic. =/

The message would normally indicate that the VBoxSVC process is running, i.e. the background process which services requests from VMs. You don't have that VBox autostart feature (discussed a few places down in this forum) enabled do you?

I do not know, I will check. I did run a search before I posted and couldn't find anything that seemed to match what's happening to me, by the way. Thank you for taking the time to reply, I do appreciate it.

So, I had a dyslexia attack and it's 4.1.2 I'm trying to get to. And it looks like autostart came in 4.2, so that shouldn't be it. Also, no vboxsvc running. dangit.

In that case I think I'm going to need the exact error message, and I believe there's an install log which you could compress and post as well.

Sounds like an orphaned *.pid file. Not sure where they store them on Mac, but a search should find it if it exists.
Linux stores these in /var/tmp/.vbox-<user>-ipc

Notice the hidden flag.

mpack, here's the error message

Perryg, I'm not finding any *.pid files at all.

Thank you both for your time on this, it's much appreciated.

here's the image url, with a space in dropbox. not sure I have image posting privileges yet; -- offsite link --
<mod edit: made picture a local attachment for more convenient viewing>

I double checked and the folder is in /tmp not /var/tmp You can delete the files if there.
Also remember the folder will be hidden because of the . so make sure you use cli or if gui have the browser show hidden files.

You have the ability to attach images from day one - the only thing you lacked was the ability to post offsite URLs on first message, because that makes you look like a spammer.

.tiff is an unfortunate choice as I can't open it directly with Firefox. PNG would IMHO be the portable image format of choice. I also don't like clicking offsite links if I can help it. I have edited your message to fix these problems.

mpack, thanks a million. I haven't spent a ton of time on forums, so please forgive the noobstink on me.

Perryg, revealed hidden files and there's nothing like .vbox-redbeard-ipc$... just the .DS_Store file.

There is a folder in ~user/library/VirtualBox/Machines for an old Chrome OS virtual box I was playing around with years ago. Could it be something to do with that?

UPDATE - Deleted the ChromeOS stuff and it didn't help.

if anybody's got any ideas for me, I'd love to hear 'em. I'm still stuck on this.

Sorry, neither I nor Perry (as far as I know) is a Mac OS X user, so we can only go by what the error message is saying - and it's saying that the VBoxSVC process is already running. You're saying it isn't, meaning the error message indicates a bug - a bug which apparantly no one else is reporting. Unless a Mac expert recognizes the symptoms (e.g. translate Perry's pid file suggestion to Mac specifics) then there's little I can think of to say. You can post a bug report, but unless you can tell the devteam how to reproduce this, the bug report will most likely be ignored.

redbeard wrote:if anybody's got any ideas for me, I'd love to hear 'em. I'm still stuck on this.

What happens when you start Activity Monitor and check the processes? Do you see any processes there called VirtualBox VM, or that start with VBox?

mpack, thanks for all the help on this, sincerely, I really do appreciate it. wasn't saying 'hey assholes, why'd you stop helping?' was more trying to see if anybody else had any ideas.

rpmurray, I've checked before, just checked again and nothing at all related to virtualbox. found and killed a process related to vmware fusion, which I haven't used in forever, and that made no difference either.

again, thanks all! think I'm gonna just hang this up and forget about it until it becomes a serious problem later. the version of vbox I'm using now is working fine.