Windows Host random crashes on clipboard copy/paste commands

[fmigneault]

At seemingly random occurrences, multiple times per day, my VM (ubuntu 20) running in the background will randomly crash when doing CTRL-C/V across other programs.

Sometimes, it happens while doing copy/paste directly between the host/guess, but at other times, it seems to happen really randomly, such as not having placed the VM in focus for a really long time, and while working on other applications (firefox, slack, word, etc.) completely unrelated/not involving the VM, it just "aborts" suddenly in the background.

Given this happens quite regularly, sometimes many times per day although sporadic, it seems "too often" to not be some specific cause at play.

I have found ticket https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/20527 that seems in the same line, but the version is older than what I got installed with the fix.

[galitsyn]

Hi fmigneault,

Host has 19.5GB of free RAM while 20GB is assigned to the VM. Do you see the issue if you decrease VM RAM?

[fmigneault]

Hi galitsyn,

I will try reducing the available RAM for the VM and report back if I encounter the issue again.

[cosimo193]

Not sure if this is the done thing, but I've just seen my Ubuntu 20.04 VM crash on a Windows 11 host using VirtualBox Version 7.1.6 r167084 (Qt6.5.3)

[galitsyn]

Hi cosimo193,

Could you please attach VBox.log as well?

[cosimo193]

Had to zip the log as it was 22kb more than the limit!

[galitsyn]

Hi cosimo193,

Thank you for the log. Looking into it, I don't see that VM has crashed though (probably this is another issue, not related to the original one). However, the following log message suggests that the other App possibly acquired system clipboard:

Shared Clipboard: Failed to open clipboard, rc=VERR_ACCESS_DENIED (0x5)

Do you have some clipboard manager App running in parallel? Also, host system is close to run out of memory.

fmigneault,

In case of your log, I also noticed that Guest Additions version does not match to the host VM installation. It is recommended to have both versions match.

[cosimo193]

Replying to galitsyn:

Thank you for the log. Looking into it, I don't see that VM has crashed though (probably this is another issue, not related to the original one). However, the following log message suggests that the other App possibly acquired system clipboard:

Shared Clipboard: Failed to open clipboard, rc=VERR_ACCESS_DENIED (0x5)

Do you have some clipboard manager App running in parallel?

Interesting that you don't see a crash, but the whole window just disappeared; it's done it a few times recently since my PC was updated to Windows 11.

I don't have another clipboard manager app running in parallel, that I know of, but I do have Windows Clipboard History turned on.

For further information, this is the first time that I actually noticed the windows disappearing at exactly the point where I'd pressed Ctrl-C on a selection, in a Chrome address bar.

Also, host system is close to run out of memory.

Yeah - it's nearly always like that - Chrome...

[cosimo193]

Oh, as an aside, that clipboard warning you saw last appeared at 102:02:35.747168 in the log, but that windows disappearing didn't happen until nearly 45 minutes later. From my log, it looks like this is the bit that caused the window to disappear:

102:46:01.277305 VMMDev: Guest Additions capability report: (0x5 -> 0x4) seamless: no, hostWindowMapping: no, graphics: yes
102:46:01.277471 GUI: UISession::sltAdditionsChange: GA state really changed, notifying listeners.
102:46:01.284330 GUI: UIMachineViewNormal::adjustGuestScreenSize: Adjust guest-screen size if necessary
102:46:01.284372 GUI: UIMachineLogicNormal::sltCheckForRequestedVisualStateType: Requested-state=1, Machine-state=6
102:46:01.308983 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBOXGUEST_IOCTL_HGCM_CALL: Invalid handle. u32Client=c
102:46:01.310334 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBOXGUEST_IOCTL_HGCM_DISCONNECT: idClient=a
102:46:01.310977 GUI: UISession::sltAdditionsChange: GA state really changed, notifying listeners.
102:46:01.311076 VMMDev: Guest Log: 17:26:36.094338 control  Guest control service stopped
102:46:01.311175 VMMDev: Guest Log: 17:26:36.094449 control  Guest control worker returned with rc=VINF_TRY_AGAIN
102:46:01.311439 GUI: UIMachineViewNormal::adjustGuestScreenSize: Adjust guest-screen size if necessary
102:46:01.311457 GUI: UIMachineLogicNormal::sltCheckForRequestedVisualStateType: Requested-state=1, Machine-state=6
102:46:01.314161 VMMDev: Guest Log: 17:26:36.097432 main     Session 0 is about to close ...
102:46:01.314203 VMMDev: Guest Log: 17:26:36.097485 main     Stopping all guest processes ...
102:46:01.314285 VMMDev: Guest Log: 17:26:36.097566 main     Closing all guest files ...
102:46:01.318282 VMMDev: Guest Log: 17:26:36.101563 main     Ended.
102:46:01.318389 GUI: UISession::sltAdditionsChange: GA state doesn't really changed, still notifying listeners.
102:46:01.318403 GUI: UIMachineLogicNormal::sltCheckForRequestedVisualStateType: Requested-state=1, Machine-state=6
102:46:01.318416 GUI: UISession::sltAdditionsChange: GA state doesn't really changed, still notifying listeners.
102:46:01.318421 GUI: UIMachineLogicNormal::sltCheckForRequestedVisualStateType: Requested-state=1, Machine-state=6
102:46:01.826135 Display::i_handleDisplayResize: uScreenId=0 pvVRAM=0000000000000000 w=1920 h=1014 bpp=0 cbLine=0x0 flags=0x2 origin=0,0
102:46:01.827861 Display::i_handleDisplayResize: uScreenId=0 pvVRAM=000001d6515d8040 w=800 h=600 bpp=32 cbLine=0xC80 flags=0x1 origin=0,0
102:46:01.840983 GUI: UIMachineLogic: Guest-screen count changed
102:46:04.664106 VMMDev: Guest Additions capability report: (0x4 -> 0x0) seamless: no, hostWindowMapping: no, graphics: no
102:46:04.664264 GUI: UISession::sltAdditionsChange: GA state really changed, notifying listeners.
102:46:04.664302 GUI: UIMachineViewNormal::adjustGuestScreenSize: Adjust guest-screen size if necessary
102:46:04.664319 GUI: UIMachineLogicNormal::sltCheckForRequestedVisualStateType: Requested-state=1, Machine-state=6
102:46:04.966888 OHCI: Software reset
102:46:05.049370 ACPI: Entering S5 power state (power down)
102:46:05.050755 Changing the VM state from 'RUNNING' to 'POWERING_OFF'

It's just over 5 minutes after the previous log entry, then the rest of the log is just all the shutting down stuff, however, I didn't ask for the shutdown, it just happened.

HTH

[Klaus Espenlaub]

That's a guest OS side initiated, clean shutdown. Can you check the guest OS's log files for hints what initiated the shutdown?

[cosimo193]

I've taken a look through what logs I can see in /var/log with timestamps of around that time in them. The only one that looks interesting, and is within 5 minutes of the device shutting down, is:

kern.log.1:Mar 11 17:26:36 myhost kernel: [139195.442541] VBOXGUEST_IOCTL_HGCM_CALL: Invalid handle. u32Client=c

It's a few days now, so there are potentially some older, gzipped logs I haven't searched properly so, if there are any specific logs you might be able to suggest, I could take a closer look.

[cosimo193]

This has just happened again; Ctrl-C in chrome, and the virtualbox guest window disappears :-(

[cosimo193]

Log after Ctrl-C in chrome caused VBox guest crash

[fmigneault]

Happened again, 3 times in a row after reboots of the VM, with no relation to consumed memory (nothing really happening on them prior to the copy).

I used a right-click-copy under some cases, so it doesn't seem to be specifically about the shortcut. In this case, I was copying URL links within Firefox. Not sure if that is relevant, but I have not encountered this issue in any other situation than while interacting with the browser.

Some "Shared Clipboard" messages are toward the end of the log (before the VM aborted), but they are not looking explicitly like "failures" or "errors".

[galitsyn]

Hi fmigneault,

Assigned RAM amount is close to available free host memory. Is there any chance you can setup silent process termination monitoring on your host?