CentOS 5.9 VM crash when running under VBox 5.1.22

[IrishGold]

Hi there,

I have a CentOS 7 machine (Kernel 3.10.0-327.18.2.el7.x86_64) with VirtualBox.

Until Today I had VirtualBox 5.0.32 r112930 (package VirtualBox-5.0-5.0.32_112930_el7-1.x86_64) installed and three VM running: two CentOS 5.9 (Kernel 2.6.18-194.3.1.el5) and one Windows XP.

Today, after installing VirtualBox 5.1.22 (package VirtualBox-5.1-5.1.22_115126_el7-1.x86_64.rpm) and the sister extension package, one of the CentOS crashed with kernel panic "Kernel Panic - Not syncing: NMI watchdog" message.

Find herein a ZIP file containing two files:

1. The image of the machine’s console at the time of the crash, and
2. The Vbox.log from the server with 5.1.22 after the VM crashed

Thanks for your help/support.

Rgds.

[IrishGold]

see ticket's comments

[IrishGold]

I don't mean to hurry you, but since the VM is my IP-PABX I'm currently without phone system.

I just would like to know whether you need any more info, log, whatever before I go back to VBox 5.0. A quick answer to this specific question would be very much appreciated.

Thanks for your understanding + support.

Rgds.

[Frank Mehnert]

Could you add the following parameters to the kernel command line of your CentOS 5.9 images: divider=10 nmi_watchdog=0. You need to add these parameters most likely to /boot/grub/grub.conf.

[IrishGold]

Indeed now it works. Thanks.

I would appreciate it very much if you could explain the logic behind it. Thanks.

Rgds.

[Frank Mehnert]

We have seen this kind of guest problem with EL5 kernels with other versions of VirtualBox as well. See also ​here.

[IrishGold]

Thanks Frank. As far as I'm concerned you can close the ticket. Thanks again. Rgds