Arch Linux

w0nder

Member

Registered: 2022-06-22

Posts: 25

[SOLVED] Virtualbox hangs on booting VM

Hi everybody,

I know this is a recurring issue for several people already, but so far the solutions I've tried haven't worked. It's the same problem as several other people have described. Ever since upgrading to kernel 5.18, VirtualBox doesn't work anymore, and any VMs I boot up will hang rather than actually start to run. In my case, the only way to cancel the VirtualBox process is to reboot my computer. Logging out doesn't work. I've tried downgrading both kernel and Virtualbox along with its host modules, and I have also tried setting ibt=off as a kernel parameter. Neither has worked. Only thing I have to go on for what's happening are a couple of errors in the VBox logs that I don't comprehend. To see what I'm talking about, attached to this post is the log of my most recent attempt to boot up a Windows 11 virtual machine I have. I use a Framework laptop DIY edition with an 11-gen Intel i5 CPU.

Log is right here

There are two errors in the log, both of which have the term ACCESSDENIED in them. If anyone thinks that has something to do with problem and knows what it means, I'd greatly appreciate your help.

Last edited by w0nder (2022-07-02 18:10:24)

d_fajardo

Member

Registered: 2017-07-28

Posts: 1,650

Re: [SOLVED] Virtualbox hangs on booting VM

I've tried downgrading both kernel and Virtualbox along with its host modules, and I have also tried setting ibt=off as a kernel parameter.

Which kernel are you on?

w0nder

Member

Registered: 2022-06-22

Posts: 25

Re: [SOLVED] Virtualbox hangs on booting VM

Switched back to 5.18 after my attempt at downgrading failed. Can't remember exactly which kernel version I downgraded to; some variant of 5.17 I recall and Virtualbox I downgraded to 6.34, some version in particular. I ran into a problem when downgrading because I originally used a Bash script from virtualbox.org to downgrade, which ended up causing some weird problems on my computer where the host modules kept failing to launch. Needed a friend to fix that problem, which put me back at square one.

I've now got the 'downgrade' program installed on my command line, so I could try downgrading again, if you've got particular versions of the kernel and VBox packages that confirmedly work with each other.

Last edited by w0nder (2022-06-29 16:19:53)

d_fajardo

Member

Registered: 2017-07-28

Posts: 1,650

Re: [SOLVED] Virtualbox hangs on booting VM

I would suggest updating everything back to the latest kernel, host modules, etc.
Did you regenerate mkinitcpio after adding the btf=off parameter?
Also post the actual VM log when trying to start a machine,

w0nder

Member

Registered: 2022-06-22

Posts: 25

Re: [SOLVED] Virtualbox hangs on booting VM

Well no, I simply pressed 'e' at the GRUB menu and added ibt=off to the parameter list. The problem wouldn't go away that way, so I figured it wasn't worth adding it to the GRUB config and trying to regenerate mkinitcpio. Also, I have a link to my log in my first post. That's the actual log I get when starting up a VM. If I change windows it'll update to reflect that the VM window has been moved in/out of focus, but aside from that, it prints nothing further than what is shown in that pastebin.

Also, I just tried downgrading again. I reverted to kernel 5.17-1 and 6.32-1 for both VBox and the Host Modules, along with the guest ISO. And I removed the Oracle extension pack since I couldn't find an older version of that.

Upon starting a VM, it crashed immediately, gave me an error and a pop-up message telling me to run '/sbin/vboxconfig'. I tried running it, but I got a "command not found" message. It's listed as a soft link to '/opt/VirtualBox/postinst-common.sh', but that program apparently doesn't exist on my computer. So I've got a link to a script file that ain't there.

Last edited by w0nder (2022-06-29 23:31:42)

The Loko

Member

From: Spain

Registered: 2014-07-23

Posts: 100

Re: [SOLVED] Virtualbox hangs on booting VM

I doubt that this problem is caused by the kernel update, I have VBox running on several machines without issues.

Try to update to last version in Arch repos and creating a new virtual machine, so you can check if you can reproduce this issue with newly created machines or just with the older ones.

Last edited by The Loko (2022-06-30 07:44:51)

w0nder

Member

Registered: 2022-06-22

Posts: 25

Re: [SOLVED] Virtualbox hangs on booting VM

Created a new VM in kernel 5.18.7-arch1-1. Hangs just like the rest of 'em. Log is the same as well.

w0nder

Member

Registered: 2022-06-22

Posts: 25

Re: [SOLVED] Virtualbox hangs on booting VM

'Kay so at last I decided to actually try adding 'ibt=off' to the grubconfig and running 'mkinitcpio', even though it didn't work when I simply added the parameter at startup. Believe it or not, it actually worked. So the problem the whole time was in fact that kernel parameter. Got my VMs working now.

scot

Member

Registered: 2017-04-22

Posts: 23

Re: [SOLVED] Virtualbox hangs on booting VM

May I ask (as a "coda" to this thread ): could someone explain to this newbie what is the difference between:
1. pressing "e" at the grub menu and adding the parameter "ibt=off" (and then booting);  vs.
2. adding "ibt=off" and running mkinitcpio ?

Thanks!

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 12,079

Re: [SOLVED] Virtualbox hangs on booting VM

mkinitcpio doesn't have anything to do with this. You add it to the kernel command line permanently by changing the bootloader config, or once by editing the command line at boot time.