virtualbox.org

I've seen quite a few posts on this forum reporting "Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!" and my log details don't seem to match any of them.

Background:

I started with a standard Ubuntu 14.04 image on a 4.x series VirtualBox on a Windows 7 host. It worked great. I used it for several months on an ongoing basis.

Then I expanded my 8GB virtual hard drive to 16GB, rebooted the Ubuntu 14.04, and it still worked great. Then I wanted to load some software that required the Ubuntu 16 distribution, so I accepted the guest system's offer to upgrade to Ubuntu 16. And now I get the kernel panic message every time I boot.

I tried upgrading my VirtualBox to 5.1.20, just in case there was a compatibility issue with VirtualBox 4.x and Ubuntu 16.x that I wasn't aware of. Nope. Still panicking.

So I'm pretty sure it's something about the Ubuntu packages or the kernel.

Error message:
VirtualBox log:
Troubleshooting:

I get the same results if I boot any of the 3.0 kernels that are installed on the guest. I get the same results if I attempt to boot single-user. I get the same results if I append selinux=0 to the end of the kernel command in grub2. I tried tweaking several VirtualBox settings like System/Acceleration/Paravirtualization, disabling the Network, disabling the Serial Port, and so on. Same results.

So I think the underlying problem is some kind of incompatibility in my setup that is only manifesting with Linux 3.x kernels and that the answer is somewhere in that log file. Thanks to anyone who can answer or suggest where else I should be looking.

Why did you post this to "Windows Hosts"? What makes you think the host has a bearing on this question?

I.

Because when I looked for similar problems before burdening you with a new question, I noticed that most of them (discounting anything Mac-specific) were also in the "Windows Hosts" section. Always observe the culture before jumping in.

II.

Further, as you can see, I summarized my thinking as

So I think the underlying problem is some kind of incompatibility in my setup that is only manifesting with Linux 3.x kernels and that the answer is somewhere in that log file.

which may or may not be correct but it's the best I could come up with after a few hours of experimentation. It seemed to me that if the host log file is likely to have the answer, then this is probably more of a host question than a guest question.

III.

There is no section for "Could be host, could be guest." Given that people who come here asking questions are doing so because we don't already know the answer, scolding us for a wrong guess seems a little unreasonable. But that's just my point of view as a person who doesn't already know the answer.

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Never mind this question then. I'll go download the VirtualBox source code and engage in some debugging there to narrow down the cause. Thank you for letting me know I'm barking up the wrong tree here.

First issue is the extension Pack is not the same as the installed version of VirtualBox and you need to fix that. But this probably will not fix your issue. I would download a Ubuntu 16.* live CD and see if it works. If so then you will need to either fix the guest or install a new one.

Moving to Linux guests.