Arch Linux

pythonic

Member

Registered: 2014-03-04

Posts: 2

Booting Archlinux in Virtualbox results in black screen

When I try to boot Archlinux into an Virtualbox-VM
I get the bootloader and after I selected a kernel
I immediately get a black screen, a full CPU-load and no further reaction of the client system.

I get no response from the Archlinux-kernel at all.

I already tried ...
* different ISO-Images of Arch-Linux (2014.03.01 and 2014.02.01)
* 32 and 64 bit kernels
* disabled nearly all IO-devices and accelerators from the VM except the CD-ATA-Controller,
* most Kernel parameters for boot problems I could think of (nomodeset noacpi noapic nolapic acpi=off loglevel=7 debug earlyprintk=vga vga=ask)

Hostsystem is a Ubuntu 12.04-LTS 64-Bit (Kernel 3.11.0-17-generic) on an Intel i7 CPU.
Virtualbox is 4.1.12

Has someone any idea what I could do now?

Last edited by pythonic (2014-03-04 17:16:53)

ilkyest

Member

From: Brazil

Registered: 2010-02-13

Posts: 269

Re: Booting Archlinux in Virtualbox results in black screen

Seems like a configuration on VM. On virtualbox, arch linux, I could never run any SO if I use EFI emulation. Try post here the "BIOS" configuration on your virtualmachine (ACPI, EFI). Not your phisical BIOS, but VM one

pythonic

Member

Registered: 2014-03-04

Posts: 2

Re: Booting Archlinux in Virtualbox results in black screen

@ilkyest: The Firmware of the VM is set to BIOS (default). I also tried EFI but the VB-EFI is very experimental and not very cooperative 8-)

I investigated the VM-Logs today but there is nothing unusual in there and especially no log-entires between the bootloader startup and my reset of the VM after the freeze.

I can boot installation CD images of several other distributions (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora) in the very same VM, but only Archlinux has a blackout immediately after being started by the boot loader.
So whats is different here?

planktronic

Member

Registered: 2014-03-20

Posts: 1

Re: Booting Archlinux in Virtualbox results in black screen

I'm experiencing the same behaviour.
Host is GUN/Linux 3.5.0-17-generic, x86_64 running VirtualBox 4.1.18_Ubuntu.
The guest is archlinux-2014.03.01-dual.iso.

After starting the VM, the "Arch Linux" boot menu appears with the expected options.
Of these options, the "Run Memtest86+ (RAM test)" and "Hardware Information (HDT)" items
seem to function correctly.

However selecting "Boot Arch Linux (x86_64)" simply blanks the screen and the VM is
no longer responsive to keyboard.

My VirtualBox runs other guests (WIN7) ok, and I've booted the same iso (from a USB drive)
on another (real) PC, so I think the iso file is fine.

The last part of the VirtualBox log before I power off the VM is;

00:00:03.959 Guest Log: BIOS: Boot from Floppy 0 failed
00:00:03.959 Guest Log: BIOS: Boot from Hard Disk 0 failed
00:00:03.960 Guest Log: BIOS: Booting from CD-ROM...
00:00:04.019 Display::handleDisplayResize(): uScreenId = 0, pvVRAM=00007f9430000000 w=640 h=480 bpp=24 cbLine=0x780, flags=0x1
00:00:09.955 Display::handleDisplayResize(): uScreenId = 0, pvVRAM=0000000000000000 w=720 h=400 bpp=0 cbLine=0x0, flags=0x1
00:00:14.261 Changing the VM state from 'RUNNING' to 'SUSPENDING'.

Does anyone have any ideas about what could be going wrong please ?

cryptz

Member

Registered: 2014-03-24

Posts: 1

Re: Booting Archlinux in Virtualbox results in black screen

I think this can help. In summary, it's because the VirtualBox version mantained in LTS repositories is old. Switch to a newer one and you will have no problem.