Execute VirtualBox from commandline and get nothing

[agent_kith]

After upgrade to VirtualBox 5.1 Linux. When I start the script /usr/bin/VirtualBox or the binary itself, nothing happens, no GUI pops up and I don't get the GUI window where I can create VMs, or start/stop them.

I'm using Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS with IceWM as my Windows Manager, QT5 should be installed (I just run apt-get install qt5-default).

VirtualBox Service and the VMs still work, I can control these VMs via the commandline (VBoxManage).

Anybody else seeing this issue? Is this a QT5 issue? How do I troubleshoot this?

[Perryg]

qmake -v will tell you for sure what version of qt you have.

You can also look at /var/log/vbox-install.log for issues, as well as dmesg.

[agent_kith]

qmake -v will tell you for sure what version of qt you have.

Here's the output after running qmake -v, confirming I'm on QT 5.x

Code: Select all

QMake version 3.0
Using Qt version 5.2.1 in /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu

You can also look at /var/log/vbox-install.log for issues, as well as dmesg.

attached vbox-install.log, think it looks ok but will appreciate if you can glance at it to confirm.

nothing shows up in dmesg.

[Perryg]

I don't see anything that jumps out to me as a problem, but did you purge the previous VirtualBox install before you installed the 5.1 version?

[agent_kith]

I don't see anything that jumps out to me as a problem, but did you purge the previous VirtualBox install before you installed the 5.1 version?

Yup, and I usually install via the "run" file.

Downloaded the deb version for 5.1 just to see if there are any dependencies that I missed and that installed fine but again no GUI and nothing in the taskbar (All VM services worked fine AFAICT).

Noticed you guys have a new 5.0.26 release so I downgraded to that, and the GUI is loaded up now.

I wonder if this is a issue related to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, hence I hope others with the same distro can verify if they are seeing the same thing. And if possible, suggest additional things I can look at to find out why the mainwindow is not shown.

edit: In short, no GUI problem only appears in 5.1, and not happening in 5.0.20, 5.0.24 and 5.0.26 (the 3 versions I tried in 5.0.x series so far).

[Perryg]

I did have issue when testing the 5.1 tree and it was due to QT. 14.04 does not have the full QT 5.3 package by default but IIRC they do have it available from ppa. I have not tried it though since I build my own packages from source.

[agent_kith]

Thanks, that's a good start, I'd try and move to QT 5.3 and see if that fixes the issues. cheers.