Linux VM's sometimes hang on shutdown

[andyross]

I've been experimenting with Ubuntu (12.04) and Linux Mint VM's under Windows 7 32-bit. I've been having an issue where the VM's don't always completely shut down and close the VM. Linux itself seems to complete the shut down, but then VB doesn't seem to recognize that and the window just sits there. I have to use Task Manager to kill the process. Are there any general reasons why this may happen?

[Perryg]

Post the guests log file (as an attachment)
See Online Users Manual for the location of the file.

[andyross]

Added attachment of the latest log. The end is full of error messages.

[Perryg]

While it is not required for 32-bit guests you will find that the guest will work much better if you enable hardware virtualization in the hosts bios (and may stop the hangs as well).
You should also upgrade the guest additions (in the guest) to match your running version of VirtualBox.

[andyross]

This computer is a Q6600. I don't know if it supports hardware virtualization.

As for Mint, it comes with the guest additions pre-installed, and does not seem to accept trying to install the newer additions.

EDIT: I guess it does, and I turned it on in the BIOS. Haven't been in there for over 5 years! Why have it off by default? I did a quick test, and it did shut down cleanly. I don't know if that's because of the virtualization support, or if it was because I only ran it a minute or so.

[Perryg]

This computer is a Q6600. I don't know if it supports hardware virtualization.

As for Mint, it comes with the guest additions pre-installed, and does not seem to accept trying to install the newer additions.

EDIT: I guess it does, and I turned it on in the BIOS. Haven't been in there for over 5 years! Why have it off by default? I did a quick test, and it did shut down cleanly. I don't know if that's because of the virtualization support, or if it was because I only ran it a minute or so.

Mint comes with (as well as a few others) their own Guest additions. To install the guest additions from VirtualBox.org you would need to remove the mint ones. Open your package manager and select to show only installed packages and search for virtualbox. select to remove them and then install ours. You should also install the following using a terminal before you try to install the GAs from VirtualBox.

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install dkms build-essential linux-headers-generic

This is important as older GAs do not support the graphics acceleration properly and the other changes made in the newer version of VirtualBox.

You should have noticed a faster boot of the guest and a little less sluggishness with VT-x enabled as well ( you may need to enable VT-x/AMD-v in the guest settings under System -> Acceleration).

[andyross]

I tried removing the original Guest and tried installing the newer one. The removal went OK and I'm now stuck at 1024x768. I can't get the new ones to install. I get the autorun prompt, but then nothing happens. I have another Ubuntu VM I was playing with, and that installed fine.

[Perryg]

Assuming you did as I suggested, manually install the GAs from the terminal, or open the guests file manager and run autorun from there. This requires you to install with sudo.

[andyross]

I think I finally figured this out. I'm a bit of a Linux newbie and have been just playing around with it in some VM's. It took a bit of Googling to figure out the correct commands to manually start the install. It is updated to 4.2.4 guest additions. It's hard to say if that made much of a difference, but enabling hardware virtualization in the BIOS has not only sped things up, but did seem to fix the original issue of shutdowns locking up.