VBox crashes often

[moonlight]

Host: Ubuntu 7.04, VRAM: 16Mb Guest: Windows 2003 server

VBox works at most 1.5 hours then crashes. (Or may work 10 minutes before crash)

[Sander van Leeuwen]

More information is needed. VBox crashes or the guest? Do you have a call trace?

[moonlight]

VBox crashes or the guest?

VBox, surely. Not guest (guest may crash, but there is no way to find whether it happened or not due to crash of VBox)

Do you have a call trace?

No, how can I get it?

[Klaus Espenlaub]

The easiest way to get a call trace is enabling core dumps (with "ulimit -c unlimited"), and start VirtualBox from exactly the shell where you enabled core dumps. Make sure no VirtualBox-related processes are running initially.

After it crashes, you should get a file named core (with or without a suffix indicating the process ID of the crashed process). It could be in the current directory or somewhere in the ~/.VirtualBox direcory tree.

Once you located this file, you need to find out what program crashed - by running "file core". To get the call trace, run "gdb program core", and issue the command "bt" at the debugger prompt. After attaching the backtrace to this ticket you can exit the debugger with "quit".

[moonlight]

Core dump is here ​ftp://dian.dyndns.biz/tmp/VBox_dumps/virtualbox_1.4.1-22865_Ubuntu_feisty_i386/vm_runtime_crash.tar.bz2 Note it's large enough, about 70 Mb. It's also will not be in public access for a long time due to security considerations

[Frank Mehnert]

Please could you try VirtualBox 1.5.0?

[Shane Bishop]

I just upgraded to 1.5, and I've only ever really used it for a Windows guest (running on Ubuntu 7.04 host). I have no problems with Windows, but guests with both Ubuntu 7.04 and 7.10 (gutsy) crash regularly. It may just be a coincidence, but it seems to always be when I'm running apt in the guest.

[Frank Mehnert]

Please could you provide a core dump? Execute

ulimit -c unlimied

before starting VirtualBox. If your bash complains about permissions, make sure that your ~/.bashrc, ~/.bash_profile, ~/.profile do not contain any 'ulimit -c 0' line.

[Frank Mehnert]

Typo, use pls use unlimited, not unlimied.

[msundman]

you need to find out what program crashed - by running "file core".

$ file core
core: ELF 32-bit LSB core file Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), SVR4-style
$

Uhh?

[Frank Mehnert]

gdb -c core

should tell you, which application crashed.

[msundman]

gdb -c core:

GNU gdb 6.6-debian
Copyright (C) 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
GDB is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and you are
welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain conditions.
Type "show copying" to see the conditions.
There is absolutely no warranty for GDB.  Type "show warranty" for details.
This GDB was configured as "i486-linux-gnu".
(no debugging symbols found)
Using host libthread_db library "/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libthread_db.so.1".
Core was generated by `/usr/lib/virtualbox/VirtualBox -comment Win2k -startvm edadd986-9c53-4a56-439d-'.
Program terminated with signal 6, Aborted.
#0  0xffffe410 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
(gdb) 

gdb /usr/lib/virtualbox/VirtualBox core:

[...]
(gdb) bt
#0  0xffffe410 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
#1  0xb5883df0 in raise () from /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6
#2  0xb5885641 in abort () from /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6
#3  0xb58b99bb in ?? () from /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6
#4  0x00000029 in ?? ()
#5  0xb3cfe820 in ?? ()
#6  0x00000400 in ?? ()
#7  0xb5ea2f95 in ldub_code_raw () from /usr/lib/VBoxREM.so
#8  0xbfd8591b in ?? ()
#9  0x0000001e in ?? ()
#10 0xb59807c1 in ?? () from /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6
#11 0x00000002 in ?? ()
#12 0xb59808c4 in ?? () from /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6
#13 0x00000022 in ?? ()
#14 0xb59807c5 in ?? () from /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6
#15 0x00000004 in ?? ()
#16 0xb3cfedd7 in ?? ()
#17 0x00000008 in ?? ()
#18 0xb59807cb in ?? () from /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6
#19 0x00000005 in ?? ()
#20 0xb01eaffc in ?? ()
#21 0x850f0011 in ?? ()
#22 0x00000000 in ?? ()
(gdb) 

[msundman]

The log that was created in the same session that the core was dumped.

[msundman]

Btw, the guest OS in this case was Windows 2000, not Windows 2003 Server.

[Frank Mehnert]

Please could you attach the core? If so, please pack it using bzip2 or something.

[msundman]

Replying to frank:

Please could you attach the core? If so, please pack it using bzip2 or something.

No, I can't, because the maximum attachment size here is 400000 bytes and the 7z-compressed core is 40974445 bytes.

[Frank Mehnert]

I see. Can you put it on a website where I can fetch it? If not, could you split the file in parts which are smaller than 4MB (e.g. man split)?

Thanks for your help.

[msundman]

Replying to frank:

I see. Can you put it on a website where I can fetch it? If not, could you split the file in parts which are smaller than 4MB (e.g. man split)?

I'm not going to upload 103 pieces. I managed to put it online, but it's exceeding my quota so I'll have to remove it soon: ​http://www.abo.fi/~masundma/tmp/crash2.7z

[Frank Mehnert]

Have it.

[Frank Mehnert]

It is very likely that we fixed that problem in 1.5.2. I will close this bug, please reopen if still relevant.