virtualbox.org

Hi,

My host is an Arch Linux system running on kernel 5.6.13.a-1-hardened and I have the following packages installed on my host:

[*]aur/virtualbox-ext-oracle 6.1.8-1
[*]community/virtualbox-host-dkms 6.1.8-2
[*]community/virtualbox 6.1.8-2

My guest (which until recently was working flawlessly) is also an Arch system running on kernel 5.6.14-arch1-1. I have the following packages installed on my guest:

[*]community/virtualbox-guest-utils 6.1.8-2
[*]community/virtualbox-guest-iso 6.1.8-1
[*]community/virtualbox-guest-dkms 6.1.8-2

I recently updated my host & guest and now when I launch the Guest I can get to the loging screen without any problem. After logging in the KDE desktop seems to load fine. However after a few seconds everything freezes and 2 errors pop up:

"VBoxClient: Failed to register resizing support, rc=VERR_INVALID_FUNCTION..."
"VBoxCLient: Failed to get display change request, rc=VERR_ACCESS_DENIED..."

I have tried restarting with all the available graphics controllers, with or without 3D acceleration, with or without VT-x, nested paging, etc.. and also I have set the Video Memory to max. However, I keep getting either a black screen after login or the described freezes. I am able to switch to a new tty in the guest so I can reach a working commandline, but I am unsure what I am searching for in there in this regard. Running the VBoxClient from the cli doesn't give me any usefull response.

I'd love to get some input on how to properly troubleshoot this further.

Don't know if this will help, I'm not running KDE, so maybe KDE issue, or maybe dkms? I have Arch Guest on Arch Host, both are Xfce and do not have any problem. Note: the guest iso isn't needed for Arch guest, its installed for other guests, guest-modules are built-in to the linux kernel.
Unrelated, I'm unable to launch Windows7 and WindowsXP guests after installing guest-iso 6.1.8, so for now those are still on GA 6.1.6. but Ubuntu and Fedora guests are fine with GA 6.1.8
EDIT: /etc/shadow wasn't replaced with shadow.pacnew was it? https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=255996

Thnx for the respons!

Unfortunatly not working yet, I changed the dkms package for the host-modules-arch one, I removed guest iso from the guest. Both didn't bring any change.

The shadow option is an interesting one, I have in my /etc/ the following files:

-rw------- 1 root root 991 Apr 20 12:33 shadow
-rw------- 1 root root 969 Mar 8 16:18 shadow-
-rw------- 1 root root 19 May 20 00:42 shadow.pacnew

So Shadow.pacnew seems indeed to be added or changed around the time I think virtualbox broke. But I haven't yet read into it, should I try moving shadow.pacnew to shadow (saving backups of both beforehand)? Seems like a tricky move so maybe I'll read into first to understand what I am doing here.

If the shadow option isn't it, I could also try to maybe change KDE to XFCE, as I am not particularly attached to KDE anyway, it just came pre-installed on the virtualbox image I got from osboxes.org

Sorry for late response, as for shadow vs shadow.pacnew you don't want to replace it without checking the differences and either update the pacnew file or simply delete it.
The pacnew file won't have your root and user passwords and won't have all the user:groups settings per your setup. My response was for sanity check that you didn't blindly replace /etc/shadow with /etc/shadow.pacnew. I don't have KDE setup and also very little experience with virtualbox-host-dkms and virtualbox-guest-dkms (had problems with dkms a few years ago so switched to virtualbox-host-modules-arch and virtualbox-guest-modules-arch, and now virtualbox-guest-modules-arch is no longer needed because guest modules are part of the kernel).
You should be able to chroot into the guest during boot up and check guest pacman log to see if something changed there, also check the host pacman log for changes that may be contributing to the current issue with guest.
Virtualbox is available in the Arch repos - so depending on your level of fluency with Arch and experience with Linux in general you might consider switching to Arch repos packages instead of the

pre-installed on the virtualbox image I got from osboxes.org.

If you haven't already, once you get guest working again keep a backup of it. I find it very useful to rsync backup my VirtualBox guests, so when updates go sideways can always replace them with the backup until can get the updates straightened out.