fail start with error: sbin.mount/vboxsf...

[mickie]

Hi there,

I have been using virtualbox for a couple of weeks. I am running windows 8 (host) and my VM is Xubuntu.
yesterday something went wrong and i cannot start my VM anymore. I get the following message "sbin.mount/vboxsf mounting fail with the error: no such file or directory".
I have a shared folder between my VM and my OS and that was working fine... Today i updated to the lastest version of VBox (4.3.6) but that did not help...
any idea of what might have happened? I have some data in the VM and I am desperately trying to recover this VM

Thanks in advance!!!
Mickie

PS: not sure if this explains the problem but i the last thing i did was to modify the number of CPUs and to increase the base memory (to half of the available CPUs/memory)

[noteirak]

Please read Minimum information needed for assistance.

Also, it appears you have a missmatch between your guest additions version (4.1.12 AND from Ubuntu) and the Vbox version.

[mickie]

Hereby the missing info:
virtualbox version 4.3.6. r91406

I am not sure if the Guest additions were installed. I got the VM from a friend
Host: Windows 8
Guest: Xubuntu
i have a 64 bits system with 12 GB RAM. I have been playing a bit with the memory allocation for the VM (always with the VM powered off). Now I have 4GB

attached the log file.

[socratis]

OK, let me give it a shot...

00:00:00.472891 Guest OS type: 'Ubuntu'
00:00:00.474710 fHMForced=true - 64-bit guest

You need to change the guest type to Ubuntu 64-bit.

00:00:00.491271 File system of 'C:\Users\zurita-milla\VirtualBox VMs\XubuntuDec\Snapshots' (snapshots) is unknown
00:00:00.491285 File system of 'D:\XubuntuGIS\xubuntuGIS.vdi' is ntfs

The .vdi is not at the same place as your VM configuration files. That is OK if when you created the VM you selected an existing .vdi. Which seems to be the case, since you got it from a friend. You got just the .vdi or the whole directory structure?

VirtualBox VM 4.3.6 r91406 win.amd64 (Dec 18 2013 17:12:34) release log
00:00:09.538077 Guest Additions information report: Version 4.1.22 r80657 '4.1.22'

Yes, Guest Additions were installed. It is normal to have a mismatch when you install a new version of VBox until you update the GAs.

00:00:00.679630 SharedFolders host service: adding host mapping
00:00:00.679638 Host path 'D:\XubuntuGIS\sharedLVM', map name 'sharedLVM', writable, automount=true, create_symlinks=false, missing=false

This is most probably the source of the problem. Does the highlighted directory exist in your host? If not, create it. If that doesn't solve it, someone with more Linux experience could tell you how to possibly bypass the auto-mounting in XUbuntu so that the boot process can continue.

[mickie]

Thanks!!

i have changed the guess type to Ubuntu 64 bits but i think that my friend said that he installed a 32 bits Xubuntu...
that did not solve the problem

I only got the .vdi and loaded it using Virtual Box. It was working fine till a couple of days ago.

OK, if i get the VM to work, i will find out how to update my Guest Additions....

yes, the folder SharedLVM exists in my host. I created it and later added it to the VM so that i could exchange files between the Host (Win) and the Guest (Xubuntu). Again, this was working fine till a couple of days ago

PS: I have removed the automounting using the properties of the VM in Vbox but this did not help either...

[socratis]

No problem. The first three were more "anomalies" with your setup.

One other thing (besides the actual folder missing from the host) that makes the VM pause during boot (at this point at least) is when you upgrade the kernel without having DKMS installed. I had an Ubuntu VM that paused during booting, but it allowed me to skip the auto-mounting and I could get around the problem. I don't know what's the procedure for XUbuntu...