virtualbox.org

Linux Mint LMDE edition ocassionally freezes itself on VirtualBox 5.0.0. It boots fine, but when it tries to get into graphical mode, it may end up with a black screen, completely unresponsive. The VM isn't unresponsive, I can reset it or power it off just fine. Also, when it does boot through, leaving it alone for long enough gets it into the lock screen, which may also freeze the VM ocassionally.

So that's Mint LMDE, fully updated, on VirtualBox 5.0.0 on Windows 7 x64.
I've told VB the OS type is "Debian (64-bit)" enabled PAE, gave it 4GB memory, 4 CPU cores, 32MB video memory and acceleration enabled. I did not discreetly install the addons, as they appear to come with the OS.

Notable host specifications:
Gigabyte Z87X-OC motherboard, Intel Core i7-4770K, 16GB memory (lots available), twin GeForce GTX760's, and VMs run on an SSD with lots of free space.

A few things to note. The current version of VirtualBox is 5.0.8. The GAs included in Mint are not supported here so you should uninstall the preinstalled versions, and install the ones from the Devices menu. PAE isn't necessary for 64bit guests.

Your CPU has 4 cores (not threads) so you shouldn't assign more than 2 cores to a guest, and unless the host has at least 8GB of available memory, 4GB assigned to the guest is too high.

Attach the vbox.log here
With the VM fully shut down, right click it in the VB GUI. Select "Show Log" and save "VBox.log" (ONLY) to a zip file. Attach the zip here.

One thing to note then: The "check for updates" feature says I'm running the latest version, which is why I assumed I was running the latest version.

About the GA: does the VB team not collaborate with the respectable linux distro's to have the GA's included? Is it wrong of them to do such a thing?
About my settings: 4GB for a guest should be fine since I've got 16GB. And 4 cores for a guest works absolutely fine for my other guests no matter which guest OS runs.

I'll check the other things shortly.

thany wrote:About the GA: does the VB team not collaborate with the respectable linux distro's to have the GA's included? Is it wrong of them to do such a thing?

VirtualBox is Open Source so others are free to take the source code and modify it as they please. Is it wrong? No. This forum supports the official build however.

does the VB team not collaborate with the respectable linux distro's to have the GA's included?

The distro's have been warned about including the guest additions, but the final decision is made by the distro as it should be.

Another thing that causes a lot of issues is distro's believe they can improve on the experience and change the source code to better match what they think should be happening and this for the most part might help the version that they are supporting the code in but when updates happen it breaks the build.

This is the one largest reason why the distro versions are not supported here. There is no way to tell what is really happening and what compatibility might be broken.

thanks for fleshing out the details Perry.

FWIW, I also have a 4 core i7 on one of my hosts and any time I've tried using more than 2 cores for the guest the performance was noticeably slower. YRMV.

Perryg wrote:

does the VB team not collaborate with the respectable linux distro's to have the GA's included?

The distro's have been warned about including the guest additions, but the final decision is made by the distro as it should be.

Another thing that causes a lot of issues is distro's believe they can improve on the experience and change the source code to better match what they think should be happening and this for the most part might help the version that they are supporting the code in but when updates happen it breaks the build.

This is the one largest reason why the distro versions are not supported here. There is no way to tell what is really happening and what compatibility might be broken.

Hm, that makes sense actually. I'll try replacing it with the official build then.