Ubuntu failing to boot

[LCD21]

I have been running Ubuntu 20.04 inside VirtualBox (version 6.0.6) on my W10 host PC. Things were fine the other day, but now I have something along the lines of the following message when I try to start it up:

Code: Select all

/dev/sda5: recovering journal
*ERROR* Failed to send host log message

I have allocated 8GB RAM and 4 CPUs to it, and when I set vbox up I gave it 25GB storage. My Graphics controller is set to VMSVGA but I have tried changing it to VBoxVGA as well as VBoxSVGA, neither of which worked. I also tried disabling 3D Acceleration, all to no avail.

It was pretty new with very little installed.. However, I was trying to learn Apache Airflow using Docker, so I have a few things set up for that, but I was only following a tutorial with not a lot of space used. When I last logged on I noticed that I had a space warning, which I was very strange because I can't have possbly used up the remaining 15GB storage (accounting for 10GB for the OS)! Could Docker have caused this problem?

I'm quite in the dark as I'm very new to ubuntu, virtualbox, and never used docker in the past. Any ideas?

Edit:  I booted from the install .iso, used "Try Ubuntu", and checked my space usage. Apparently it's only at ~5gb, so I suppose this has nothing to do with space. Although that doesn't explain why I received a low space warning previously!

[scottgus1]

*ERROR* Failed to send host log message

This part of the error happens in many or all of my Ubuntu guests, and the guest OS continues and boots just fine. It's an in-the-OS status message that does not cause trouble.

If your guest continues to boot and is usable you can disregard it.

If the guest does not boot, please post a guest log:

Start the guest from full power off, not save-state. Run until you see the problem happen, then shut down the guest from within the guest OS if possible. If not possible, close the Virtualbox window for the guest with the Power Off option set.

Please right-click the guest in the main Virtualbox window's guest list, choose Show Log. Save the far left tab's log, zip the log file, and post the zip file, using the forum's Upload Attachment tab.

What's been stored inside the guest OS is beyond the scope of the Virtualbox forum, same as how HP or Dell could not influence what has been stored on the PC's disk. You'll need to investigate this yourself. If you have to make a larger guest disk, see How to resize a Virtual Drive.

[LCD21]

Thank you for the assistance. I've attached my guest log as you suggested. As for the size, it does not seem to be related to this issue (as mentioend in my OP edit).

[scottgus1]

No Hyper-V interference, good:

00:00:02.963088 HM: HMR3Init: VT-x w/ nested paging and unrestricted guest execution hw support

If the guest does not boot, please post a guest log:

Posting the log implies to me that the guest is not booting after this error message.

The only thing I see as a possible problem is rather too old Virtualbox for the installed Guest Additions:

00:00:02.591822 VirtualBox VM 6.0.6 r130049 win.amd64 (Apr 16 2019 10:52:04) release log
00:00:11.297378 VMMDev: Guest Additions information report: Version 6.1.10 r138449 '6.1.10_Ubuntu'

And those GAs are the Ubuntu fork, too.

Though 6.0.6 is rather old it can still be used. However it's early in the version cycle for 6.0.x, more bugs have been fixed since then, and you might do better having a later version. If you don't want to go newest, 6.1.14 as of today, you could try a later version in 6.0.x. 6.0.14 was stable for a long time in the forum and I still have that version on my Windows 10 workstation. Solid as a rock.

However if nothing was changed between the guest working and not, then the GAs and Virtualbox version wouldn't be the problem.

I can't see what might be causing the guest to not boot. Try a brand-new guest and see if it gets the same problem.

[LCD21]

Though 6.0.6 is rather old it can still be used. However it's early in the version cycle for 6.0.x, more bugs have been fixed since then, and you might do better having a later version. If you don't want to go newest, 6.1.14 as of today, you could try a later version in 6.0.x. 6.0.14 was stable for a long time in the forum and I still have that version on my Windows 10 workstation. Solid as a rock.

Actually since I posted I made an update to the latest, just in case. But still the same.

However if nothing was changed between the guest working and not, then the GAs and Virtualbox version wouldn't be the problem.

That's what is strange about this.

However if nothing was changed between the guest working and not, then the GAs and Virtualbox version wouldn't be the problem.

I can't see what might be causing the guest to not boot. Try a brand-new guest and see if it gets the same problem.

I set up a new VM as you suggested and it works. After installation just as it was restarting there was an error with "failed to load..." but it was too quick for me to catch as I wasn't expecting it. In any case, don't think that had anything to do with the previous error because this new one seems to be functioning as expected.

[scottgus1]

I set up a new VM as you suggested and it works.

If the new guest works and the old guest does not, then either there are differences in the Virtualbox settings between the two guests or the guest OS itself has gone bad, which can happen in real PCs too.

Compare the guest settings, then try troubleshooting inside the bad guest OS using that OS's help channels.

[LCD21]

I set up a new VM as you suggested and it works.

Compare the guest settings, then try troubleshooting inside the bad guest OS using that OS's help channels.

I set the new guest up identically to the previous one so the settings should be the same except for the fact that this is on a new version of vbox. Also, when you say to troubleshoot in the bad guest OS using the OS's help channels, do you have any suggestions on what specifically I should do? What do you mean by the OS's help channels?

[scottgus1]

What do you mean by the OS's help channels?

Google & their forums, mostly. Just pretend the guest is a real PC, and Virtualbox is not involved, just like you'd do if it was a Dell PC or a home-built with parts from Newegg.

[LCD21]

Hi, I am at a loss with this. I changed to another host PC and set up a new virtualbox which seemed to be working fine. Then now I get the same thing, hanging on the ubuntu logo. I can't catch the message because it is masked by a popup.

I've attached my logs in case this can give any pointers. I've used pretty much the same setup parameters as before. The only things I am doing each time are enabling fullscreen in vbox but I can't see why this would crash it every time.

[fth0]

On the host PC you changed to, either disable 3D Acceleration in the VM settings, or install the (older) version 446.14 of the NVIDIA graphics drivers.