Virtualbox issue after recent stable-update (Manjaro Host and Guest - both Plasma/KDE)

Support Virtualization
, ,
1

After the update, the VM was just automatically being “paused”, when I tried to boot it.
No password-prompt for the encrypted VM. Just kept hanging in “paused”-state. When “unpausing” the VM, the cursor started blinking again … but nothing else would happen.

Then, I did:
pacman -Rc virtualbox virtualbox-dkms
pacman -Scc
pacman -Syyuu
pacman -S virtualbox virtualbox-dkms

And then installed the current Extension-package from here:
https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

After that, the VM booted again. Everything seemed to run fine, but I noticed glitches, here and there (e.g. when hovering on any random element of a website, a purple rectangle would appear and almost instantly disappear again … or rectangles, that showed content from other tabs, etc … in short: gfx-glitches).

Especially when playing a video on youtube (inside the VM) … and then suddenly the image froze and I could do nothing anymore (no hotkeys … no mouse-clicks … sometimes, I’d be able to see the scrollbars highlight, when I hovered over them with my mouse-pointer, but that would be all).

I’ve had 3D-acceleration enabled (in the virtualbox-settings for the VM) and it crashed over and over again. Now, I’ve disabled 3D-acceleration and it still crashes.

I haven’t even touched Firefox or youtube (was using Brave on reddit, when it recently happened again … twice in a row, when I was just typing a post … nothing, that would put any strain on my graphics-card).

So, I don’t know, if it has anything to do with the browsers, I use … or the websites, I’m trying to use … or if it’s just gonna keep happening, randomly, no matter what I do …

Before the update, I had zero problems, with that VM.

If you need more data to help, just ask … I’ll try to make it as easy as possible.

Is this a bug or can I fix this myself, somehow?

2

I don’t think it is a bug - but then - I am no longer using Nvidia but either AMD or Intel graphics and I am not using the saved state feature much - if at all.

I have had no issues in the transistion from VBox 6 to VBox 7 - I migth just have that system which steers clear of all the issues I read about.

First thing to do is to ensure both systems uses all defaults, are fully synced with no custom packages and no custom repo. This is probably far tetched - make sure both systems uses the same mirror.

Start with the host - as a precaution reboot the host afterwards - (if nothing is updated - skip the reboot)

sudo pacman -Syu

If you are using the Oracle extension pack - disable your virtual machines dependency on the extensions and remove it.

As I recall - VBoxVGA and VBoxSVGA is for Windows VMs - so set it to VMSVGA and disable 3D - you can reenable 3D later as part of the troubleshooting process.

But you may want to ensure enough VRAM has been assigned - move the slider to 128MB.

Start the virtual machine - if it starts from a saved state - reboot it - and issue the same sync command as the host.

3

Thanks for your reply!

Somehow, I don’t seem to get my email-messages, that I had a reply, here. I’m gonna check the settings (here in the forum) to try and fix that.
Sorry, that I’m replying so late.

In the meantime, I’ve basically done more research and updates etc.
Pretty much everything, you described, is as you instructed.

Virtualbox and the VMs basically all work with the settings you suggested (already had most of it set up that way). But, enabling 3D still leads to frequent crashes of the VMs (VM just freezes out of nowhere and I have to close it (power off).

Sometimes, I get pixely areas (e.g. when having a youtube-video running and switching from one to the next … while the new page is loading, there are visible glitches roughly in the area where the last video was playing (big embedded video, but not fullscreen).

The glitches disappear when the new page/video has loaded and starts playing, though.
But, afterwards, it seems the risk of the VM freezing is significantly higher.

So I kept 3D deactiveated, ever since (which seems to cause higher CPU-loads (25% on an i7 6700k), and thus more heat (up to about 70 or 80°C max.), but at least it kinda works).

I still have no clue, what else to do about it. But, I’m guessing, that this might be one of the issues, nvidia-users are facing (I’m still using my old GTX1060 … no money for an upgrade to amd … I’d do it, but I don’t have the option at the moment).