XP VM freezes host on Linux kernel 3.5. Fine on 3.4.

[Jimbo]

Running Sabayon Linux 10 on a 12 proc 24G box, which normally would be running Kernel 3.5 about now... but after upgrading to 3.5, reinstalling VB modules, and starting an XP VM... VB will hang my system; no blank screen, just frozen. This has occured with 4.1.20 as well as 4.2. I have managed to boot a very simple XP session and bring it back down (I have yet to see how long it can run before freezing the box tho) but one XP VM in particular, my most important one go figure, will consistantly hang the system with the windoze status bar still going. Main differences between the 2 VMs are CPU: 2 vs 8, Mem: 2G vs 8G and USB access to a card reader. Backing off to 3.4 and everthing works great. Nothing in the logs. I'm befuddled.

[Frank Mehnert]

When does it hang exactly, immediately after starting the (before the VBox splash screen appears) or later? Please attach a VBox.log from such a VM session. Please also attach a kernel log of the host when such a freeze happened. We run VBox on 3.5 kernels without any problem.

[Jimbo]

After the VB screen, between the status bar and anytime after, but usually before the desktop is displayed. I'll re-install 3.5 this weekend and test. Thanks. -Jim

[Jimbo]

VB and dmesg logfiles.

[Jimbo]

Blue screen error when booting VM

[Jimbo]

Gotta love a moving target. Not.

I booted 3.5 and recompiled the modules, started the VM, "Carve Wright", and it blue screened rather than freeze the box. Windows update had run recently so I'm thinking that might have something to do iwth it. I will have to investigate the problem.

To test VB I booted a "simple" XP VM "XB_base" and that started and stopped fine, but that's all it did... it wasn't up but for a minute. I'll be doing a longevity load test next. I will also go back to 3.4 and see if my Carve Wright VM boots or blue screens.

There are some odd errors in the VM logs. No clue as to what they mean.

I'll keep you posted. If you find anything please let me know.

Thanks, -Jim

[Jimbo]

Of note, but not sure if it makes any difference; the problem VM is on a EXT4 single disk SSD whereas the XP_base is on a BTRFS 5 disk raid LUN.

-Jim

[Jimbo]

Little update: W/3.5 I can't get past the blue screen and/or hang, but it works fine booted from 3.4, so the actual OS seems to still be intact. Maybe some strange corruption of the .vdi? -Jim

[Jimbo]

OK, I broke down and decided to move to a new VM; I cloned a basic, working XPSP3 VM, booted it during the modification of each of the following; PAE, CPU from 1 to 2, Memory from 4G to 6G. Worked fine. Thinking I'm ready to install my software I upped the CPUs to 10 and memory to 12G and booted. System hung, hard. I can't give you anymore detail because once it came back I discovered that /home wouldn't mount so I'm battling that fire now. Hope this is a good clue tho. Thx. -Jim

[aeichner]

Please reopen if still relevant with a recent VirtualBox release.