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Linux Guest crashes as soon as firefox starts
Posted: 24. Apr 2014, 04:39
by butters
So I have a linux guest (Lubuntu 13.10) running on 4.3.10 under Win7 Enterprise. Runs fine, until today I launch firefox in the linux guest and it crashed the virtual box guest cold. Firefox version is 28.

- virtualbox crash.PNG (32.5 KiB) Viewed 6581 times
Anyone seen this kind of thing before?
Re: Linux Guest crashes as soon as firefox starts
Posted: 24. Apr 2014, 12:59
by mpack
VM log file please:
Minimum information needed for assistance.
I use Firefox in all my VMs, I've never had a problem.
Re: Linux Guest crashes as soon as firefox starts
Posted: 12. May 2014, 12:50
by manuelcr
Hi, same problem here.
I had a VM running a guest RedHat 6.4 Workstation (64bits - 3072MB RAM, Guest Addition installed) in a W7 Enterprise (64bits-8192MB RAM) with Virtual Box 4.3.10 r93012
All was fine, until that i updated RedHat with the last security and bug patchs.
Now the VM crashes when I open Firefox (updated to the version: 24.5.0; release: 1.el6_5). Sometimes the Screen gets black and i can recover the X with CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE, but having to login again. Other times Virtual Box crashes.
Update:
I have disabled the '3D acceleration' in the VM configuration and it seems to work now.
Re: Linux Guest crashes as soon as firefox starts
Posted: 12. May 2014, 13:20
by loukingjr
manuelcr wrote:Hi, same problem here.
I had a VM running a guest RedHat 6.4 Workstation (64bits - 3072MB RAM, Guest Addition installed) in a W7 Enterprise (64bits-8192MB RAM) with Virtual Box 4.3.10 r93012
All was fine, until that i updated RedHat with the last security and bug patchs.
Now the VM crashes when I open Firefox (updated to the version: 24.5.0; release: 1.el6_5). Sometimes the Screen gets black and i can recover the X with CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE, but having to login again. Other times Virtual Box crashes.
Update:
I have disabled the '3D acceleration' in the VM configuration and it seems to work now.
I don't remember since it's been awhile since I used FF 24 but, in the FF preferences>Advanced>General, there should be a setting to disable Hardware Acceleration. You might want to try disabling it and see if you can turn 3D back on for your guest. Also, if you are using Flash Player you can turn off Hardware Acceleration for Flash. I don't think you have to do both though.
Re: Linux Guest crashes as soon as firefox starts
Posted: 12. May 2014, 15:01
by manuelcr
loukingjr wrote:
I don't remember since it's been awhile since I used FF 24 but, in the FF preferences>Advanced>General, there should be a setting to disable Hardware Acceleration. You might want to try disabling it and see if you can turn 3D back on for your guest. Also, if you are using Flash Player you can turn off Hardware Acceleration for Flash. I don't think you have to do both though.
Hi, I have disabled in Firefox the Hardware Acceleration, and re-enabled it in VirtualBox. It crashes again
So, I have disabled it in Virtual Box.
Thanks.
Re: Linux Guest crashes as soon as firefox starts
Posted: 12. May 2014, 15:06
by loukingjr
manuelcr wrote:loukingjr wrote:
I don't remember since it's been awhile since I used FF 24 but, in the FF preferences>Advanced>General, there should be a setting to disable Hardware Acceleration. You might want to try disabling it and see if you can turn 3D back on for your guest. Also, if you are using Flash Player you can turn off Hardware Acceleration for Flash. I don't think you have to do both though.
Hi, I have disabled in Firefox the Hardware Acceleration, and re-enabled it in VirtualBox. It crashes again
So, I have disabled it in Virtual Box.
Thanks.
you're welcome. I'm not sure why it's crashing. Like mpack, I have been running FF without issue for a long time in Windows and Linux guests without any problems. you should read the link mpack posted and follow the instructions.
Re: Linux Guest crashes as soon as firefox starts
Posted: 15. May 2014, 16:42
by Kossak
I had exactly the same problem, and turning off 3d acceleration in VB helped. Thank you for workaround.
Re: Linux Guest crashes as soon as firefox starts
Posted: 13. Jun 2014, 17:41
by hoeferbe
Did anybody ever open a ticket regarding this issue? I'm seeing about the same thing on my CentOS 5 host running VirtualBox 4.3.12 and a Fedora 19 guest. The guest had 3D graphics acceleration enabled, and starting Firefox would sometimes cause the entire guest to crash. I have not had a crash since disabling my guest's 3D acceleration within VirtualBox.
Re: Linux Guest crashes as soon as firefox starts
Posted: 13. Jun 2014, 18:49
by loukingjr
hoeferbe wrote:Did anybody ever open a ticket regarding this issue? I'm seeing about the same thing on my CentOS 5 host running VirtualBox 4.3.12 and a Fedora 19 guest. The guest had 3D graphics acceleration enabled, and starting Firefox would sometimes cause the entire guest to crash. I have not had a crash since disabling my guest's 3D acceleration within VirtualBox.
you could try this guest additions test build...
https://www.virtualbox.org/download/tes ... -94067.iso it seems to fix some OpenGL/3D issues. at least it did in my Fedora 20 Mate Compiz guest.
for what it's worth though, I had Firefox 30 crash on me once on a Mac host. No idea why. I was just looking at the screen and it closed.

Re: Linux Guest crashes as soon as firefox starts
Posted: 27. Jun 2014, 08:21
by dmischa
loukingjr wrote:
you could try this guest additions test build...
https://www.virtualbox.org/download/tes ... -94067.iso it seems to fix some OpenGL/3D issues. at least it did in my Fedora 20 Mate Compiz guest.
for what it's worth though, I had Firefox 30 crash on me once on a Mac host. No idea why. I was just looking at the screen and it closed.

after updating firefox on my system: host osx snow leopard, guest centos 6.5, virtualbox 4.2.24, starting firefox yields to massive graphics corruptions. Could you please provide the patched guestadditions for 4.2.24, may be the problem could be solved with your patch also for 4.2.24
Re: Linux Guest crashes as soon as firefox starts
Posted: 27. Jun 2014, 10:59
by loukingjr
dmischa wrote:after updating firefox on my system: host osx snow leopard, guest centos 6.5, virtualbox 4.2.24, starting firefox yields to massive graphics corruptions. Could you please provide the patched guestadditions for 4.2.24, may be the problem could be solved with your patch also for 4.2.24
It's not my patch. I don't know why you are having issues with Firefox btw, I have FF 30 installed on 4 Macs, about 12 Linux guests and two Windows guests 7 and 8.1, and it is fine on all of them. Try starting Firefox in safe mode. Maybe it's an addon causing a problem.
Re: Linux Guest crashes as soon as firefox starts
Posted: 27. Jun 2014, 11:10
by dmischa
loukingjr wrote:dmischa wrote:after updating firefox on my system: host osx snow leopard, guest centos 6.5, virtualbox 4.2.24, starting firefox yields to massive graphics corruptions. Could you please provide the patched guestadditions for 4.2.24, may be the problem could be solved with your patch also for 4.2.24
It's not my patch. I'm not sure why you are having issues with Firefox btw, I have FF 30 installed on 4 Macs, about 12 Linux guests and two Windows guests 7 and 8.1, and it is fine on all of them.
I'm using virtualbox 4.3.12 with centos 6.5 guest on two centos 5.10 and one osx mavericks hosts without any problem. On the osx snow leopard host the firefox-problem appears with virtualbox 4.3.12 and 4.2.24.
Re: Linux Guest crashes as soon as firefox starts
Posted: 27. Jun 2014, 11:14
by loukingjr
you could try turning off hardware acceleration for the problematic FF. It's in preferences>general.
Re: Linux Guest crashes as soon as firefox starts
Posted: 27. Jun 2014, 11:24
by dmischa
loukingjr wrote:you could try turning off hardware acceleration for the problematic FF. It's in preferences>general.
with firefox-24.4.0-1.el6.centos.x86_64 there is no problem, only the newer updates produce the graphics corruptions
Re: Linux Guest crashes as soon as firefox starts
Posted: 27. Jun 2014, 11:40
by loukingjr
which Mac or Macs are you running OSX 10.6.8 or OSX 10.9 on?