virtualbox.org

Hi –
I am having trouble running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS as a guest in Virtual Box 4.3.8. I have installed the guest additions for Ubuntu. The Host machine is a Dell Xeon 8 Core PC running 64bit Windows 7 Enterprise, with 32 Gb of RAM. The Virtual Machine Settings are:
- 15,124 MB RAM, 5 CPUs
- The following are checked: PAE/NX, VT-x/AMD-V, Nested Paging
- Dynamically allocated storage of 300 Gb.
I have attached what appears to be the log of the most recent session.

The problem I am experiencing is unpredictable behavior of the Ubuntu guest. The most common problem is the Ubuntu log in splash screen will come up after starting the Virtual Machine and then let me enter my password. Once I enter my password, the desktop appears with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS in the lower left corner, but no menu buttons or programs bar on the left side of the screen, or along the top. Basically I can't do anything. I end up having to use the 'Power off the Machine' option, and reboot again. Sometimes it will work, sometimes it won't (most of the time the same thing happens). Once it booted into the Grub menu, and I ran it in Recovery mode, but it still did not work. Overall if I shut it off an on about three or four times, it will eventually work. However, this is not a good strategy.

I am assuming I have chosen some kind of incorrect setting that is causing this issue. I am not computer savvy enough to know what this may be, and was hoping you all could please provide some insight on what I can try to fix this.

Thanks for your assistance -

VirtualBox is really having an issue with the Video in the guest logs. Did you enable 3D in the guests display section?

No, both the 'Enable 3D Accel' and 'Enable 2D Video Accel' are unchecked. Do I need to have the 2D acceleration checked?

I just tried checking the 2D box and it says the machine is set to use Video stream acceleration, and 2D is an invalid setting. I had heard of people having trouble with the 3D option checked so I did not check it.

Linux does not need 2D & not sure it even uses it, but turn 3D on and boot the guest. If it fails shut it down and post the new log file ( as an attachment ).

Ok, I powered the machine off, and checked the 3D acceleration option. It seems to have started up normally. I have attached the log anyway, and I am going to turn it on and off a few times to see if it works consistently.

Thanks for your help.

Ok, I just restarted again and I have the same problem - I log in, but the program menu bar on the left and menu options along the top never show up. I have attached the Log.

OK I need to see a couple of things.

From the host command window type the following and post the results.

From the guest press the host+F1 to open a tty and run the following and tell me if chromium and humper are being used.

Ok, I attached the results of showvminfo. Pressing right control and F1 wasn't doing anything in thefrozen host, so I restarted the Virtual Machine again. When the login splash screen came up, I typed what you asked. It said that "'glxinfo' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing: sudo apt-get install mesa-utils' So, I installed mesa-utils. When I type in glxinfo | grep OpenGL, it says unable to open display. What am I doing wrong? Sorry if this is something obvious.

VBox seems to be happy with everything so it is the guest that has issues at this point.

You really need to log in before you drop to the tty window, because if not the VirtualBox drivers will not be loaded.

OK try this
Start the guest and press Ctrl+Alt+t and see if the terminal opens. If so then type the following You may need to install the mesa utils. While in that window type the following Then re-run the above command

I had to stop and start the guest about 5 times before I could log in. I opened a terminal and The last 5 lines said:
OPenGL vendor string: Humper
OpenGL renderer string: Chromium
OpenGL vesrion string: 2.1 Chromium 1.9
OpenGL shading language version string: 3.30 NVIDIA via Cg compiler
OpenGL extensions:

Above that were along list of warnings like 'OpenGL Warning: [name] not found in mesa table'

If I try this using the tty terminal, I get the same 'Error unable to open display' message.

The errors are known and do not interfere with the guest working.

OK let's try a couple of things.

1) set the guests RAM to 4GB
2) make sure that the hosts nVidia drivers are the newest.

Reboot the host and then try again.

Ok, I tried setting the RAM to 4 Gb, and I downloaded the latest NVIDIA drivers. The Virtual Machine still kept freezing after login.

This morning, I decided to uninstall 4.3.8 and downgrade to 4.3.6 instead. I had found previously that running an Ubuntu 12.04 vmdk format virtual machine I had downloaded from the web worked fine using 4.3.6, so figured it was worth a shot to go back to 4.3.6 and try the virtual machine I created in 4.3.8 that was giving me trouble. So far, everything seems to be working fine now in 4.3.6. Whether or not that was really the problem, I don't know, but I am just glad it works so I can start using it. Thanks for your help, and I'll update the thread if I run into the same issues.

I had the same issue with my ubuntu guests (i.e. 12.04) after upgrading to virtualbox 4.3.8 but I just reinstalled the linux guest additions software (Devices > Insert Guest Additions CDROM or host+D) and everything is back to normal. Hope that helps...