[WorksForMe] VirtualBox 5.2.10 not starting

[olad]

Installation of VB 5.2.10 'successful' but VB fails to start. I have uninstalled and re-installed several times, same result.

[andyp73]

As it was your first post we'll go gently on you but posting log files and other output in anything other than plain text is frowned upon and many of the folks around here wouldn't open it.

That said...

OS Version: Mac OS X 10.13.5 (17F45c)

It seems you are playing at the bleeding edge of the macOS development as 10.13.5 is still, as far as I can tell, in beta which may not yet have been tested by the VirtualBox devs. As lots of the patches and updates for operating systems, generally, are for mitigating security issues, both software and hardware, you could try the latest Test Build to see if that gets any further.

We do sometimes get problems with system libraries being changed for so can you post the output of the following commands:

ls -al /Applications
ls -al /usr/local/lib
echo $PATH
kextstat | grep -v com.apple

-Andy.

[mpack]

As Andy said, please do not convert log files into other formats. Text is more compact and is ideal for searching. Rtf versions of plain text are not really good for anything.

[olad]

A thousand apologies - truly. I should have read the guide. I had had no problems with VB in the past, and this was the first time it did not work. I will be patient and wait for the kinks to be worked out. Thank you for your help.

[olad]

Er... I am back again. Pls bear with me. I have 2 MBPs, both running macOS 10.13.5 beta, both with VirtualBox 5.2.10. On one, VirtualBox works very well. On the other not. Attached is the text file of the error message. Asking for it to be deciphered is one thing, asking to be educated on how to decipher the messages is another. I am asking for the latter - which is why I would you bear with me a bit longer. Thank you all. BTW, I did try the test builds - same result - worked on the first, failed on the other, so the problem seems to be something gone wrong on that machine.

[andyp73]

On one, VirtualBox works very well. On the other not.

So the first question to ask is "what are the differences in terms of software installed on the one that fails?" Is there something that has been installed that has either screwed up the permissions or something that has replaced one of the system libraries?

I'm still a newbie when it comes to interpreting Apple crash logs so we will need to wait for an expert to pop by.

-Andy.

[olad]

The working one is a MBP 2008 early, and the non-working one MBP late 2012, non retina. i treat both equal measures. beyond that i don't know what other info is needed. hopefully, some expert will come along...

[socratis]

You have posted two different logs, with two different builds; 17F45c vs 17F59b. Both crashes are identical, so whatever is causing the crash hasn't been modified/altered, the conditions are still there. For easiness of reading, I'll markthe differences in Blue for the old build, vs Red for the new build, like I did above. That applies only in this section, where I'm comparing the two crash logs.

You're getting a "Segmentation fault: 11" which pretty much is bad news. You need access to a debug build of VirtualBox to get any more information. What is interesting though, is that you're getting a different error code: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x0000000000000000, vs EXC_I386_GPFLT. I don't really know if Apple changed their error handling in between builds, but it's quite possible. For reference, according to a source, there are 27 different sources for the EXC_I386_GPFLT error; not quite a child's play to figure it out.

But, if VirtualBox was doing something nasty, like accessing out of bounds memory, or an invalid pointer, it would happen on both of your systems, not just one. So, common logic dictates that there is a difference between the two systems, not with VirtualBox.

---

First of all, I want to make sure that VirtualBox is installing properly, and there is nothing that limits the installation (installation, bad permissions, Apple's idiotic Security Guard initiative). In order to do that, I'm going to need the full installation logs, from both systems. Since we're dealing with an OSX beta, we're going to go with the test builds.

You might want to print the following steps, or save them in a test file on your desktop, because there are a couple of reboots, and you don't want to go "hunting" in the forums...

1. Download the latest test build (NOT the development snapshot), if you don't already have them.
2. Reboot.
3. Make sure you're part of the "admin" group. If you are logged in with the primary user account/owner, you are part of the admin group.
4. Mount the DMG from the previous step. Run "VirtualBox_Uninstall.tool". Make sure there are no error messages. If there are, please post them, exactly as they appear.
5. Reboot.
6. Mount the DMG from the previous steps. Double-click the "VirtualBox.pkg". As soon as you start the installation, press "Cmd+L" to show the log. Select "Show All Logs" from the drop-down menu. Before the last step of the installation (hitting Done), click the "Save" in the log window. ZIP and attach that file.

---

Next, we want to figure out some basic system information. Andy included these instructions; maybe you didn't see them. So I'll repeat them. Post the output from both systems of the following command as entered in the Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal). I want to see everything, command and output, not just the output:

• 
  ls -ale@ /
  ls -ale@ /Applications
  ls -ale@ /Applications/VirtualBox
  ls -ale@ /private/tmp
  ls -ale@ /usr/local/lib
  echo $PATH
  kextstat | grep -v com.apple
  

That's it for now, you got a lot of information to collect, we got a lot of information to analyze. Please read carefully the instructions given above, there's no point in repeating any given procedure.

[olad]

@socratis... thank you for your detailed post and help. the most valuable thing you said was 'common logic dictates that there is a difference between the two systems...' that observation prompted me to rethink what i was doing, and since i had the installer of the 10.13.4 on the machine, i thought reinstalling it would/should take care of any corrupted files. that is what i am doing now, except it is taking forever. but i thank you sincerely for pointing out the obvious to me. the reason you did not get an immediate response is that i am on GMT 0. when the re-installation is finished, i will try using VirtualBox again.

[olad]

VB working again. Thank you all, especially 'socratis'.

[socratis]

Good news. So, the system was botched somehow. Classic...
Glad you got it going. Marking as [WorksForMe].