Upgranding Ubuntu 11.04 to 11.10 on guest failing

[Gary Evans]

Using a clone of a fully-functioning VM running Ubuntu 11.04 as the guest I tried to upgrade to Ubuntu 11.10 by accepting the option to upgrade offered by Ubuntu following the login. The upgrade process appeared to work up to a point in the process where it hung and the display for the guest showed a very rapidly flashing series of dialog boxes, from which it was possible to see that it appeared to be stuck reinstalling grub. The only way out was to shut down the guest. After restarting, the initial Ubuntu Logo showed but the VM would not boot. I tried this three times, with the same result each time. I also did the upgrade on a separate machine not running virtualbox and it completed without any problems. I also installed Ubuntu 11.10 from scratch on a new VM without any problems.

[Gary Evans]

Log file from failed VM

[John DeStefano]

I also had a functioning Ubuntu 11.4 64-bit VB VM on a Windows 7 64-bit host, did an in-place upgrade of the OS, rebooted, and got stuck at Ubuntu's "waiting for disk" boot screen, which never changed. Several forced resets in either the same loading screen or a black screen. I then tried upgrading VB and the extensions pack from 4.0.12 to 4.1.4, but no change in behavior. Then tried booting an Ubuntu 11.10 live CD image, re-installing over the existing OS, and rebooting: same results. Then tried the VBoxFixHdd-Win utility, and ended up with an invalid VM desktop shortcut and an "inaccessible" error in VB, which seems to indicate the disk UID has been changed. Then created a new VM instance using the "old" VB disk image. Booting directly from the VB main interface still results in an endless boot or black screen. There are no errors from VB or otherwise; the VM just never finishes booting or leaves the black or Ubuntu low-res loading screen.

I've seen multiple forum posts about similar problems, and several suggestions, but nothing's worked for me thus far.

[John DeStefano]

alt boot screen; gets here after several seconds and never changes afterward

[Michael Thayer]

Can you reproduce this by doing a fresh 11.04 installation and upgrading that? (On balance I would guess this is more likely an Ubuntu issue than a VirtualBox one though - have you seen any similar reports about the same thing on physical hardware?)

[John DeStefano]

Hi Michael,

Replying to michael:

Can you reproduce this by doing a fresh 11.04 installation and upgrading that? (On balance I would guess this is more likely an Ubuntu issue than a VirtualBox one though - have you seen any similar reports about the same thing on physical hardware?)

Judging from the threads in the Ubuntu forum alone, I think it's safe to say there's a problem: ​https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=+site:ubuntuforums.org+ubuntu+upgrade+problem+11.04+11.10

However, since there is no clear, universal answer, it may be unfair to pin the problems solely on the OS; in some cases, there's likely an incompatibility introduced by the combination of the OS and the "hardware" layer provided by VB.

[Michael Thayer]

Actually I meant specifically the problem you are seeing. I was already aware that people have problems on occasion upgrading one version of Ubuntu to another, with or without VirtualBox. The fact remains though that before I look at your issue I would like a bit more indication that it is related to VirtualBox, and I definitely need at least enough information to investigate it, which preferably means a way to reproduce it.

[John DeStefano]

Hi Michael, Replying to michael:

Actually I meant specifically the problem you are seeing. I was already aware that people have problems on occasion upgrading one version of Ubuntu to another, with or without VirtualBox. The fact remains though that before I look at your issue I would like a bit more indication that it is related to VirtualBox, and I definitely need at least enough information to investigate it, which preferably means a way to reproduce it.

OK, understood. In my case, I took the route that the problem must have been related to one of the two main Ubuntu upgrade issues that are being reported: broken upgraded package set that renders the system unbootable, or changes to the thread locking mechanism. I started by logging into a recovery session as root, mounting the main partition, enabling Ethernet, and starting the package upgrade over with: apt-get update apt-get dist-upgrade

After unmounting and rebooting the VM, I still can't boot, but now the boot screen gets stuck at a "warning" related to SMBus: piix4_smbus SMBus base address uninitialized - upgrade BIOS or use force_addr=0xaddr

I say "warning" because other VB forum posts seem to indicate that this is only a warning and should not affect booting, but it seems to be affecting my VB instance. I changed the virtual disk controller without any effect. Let me know if there's something else I can try?

I don't mean to hijack the thread: evansgp01 should mention whether any of this is relevant to his issue.

[Michael Thayer]

Replying to deesto: It seems to me that this is more about Ubuntu upgrading issues than about VirtualBox. Perhaps you would be better going to the Ubuntu forums to try to solve it there?

[John DeStefano]

MIchael: as I've mentioned, I think this may be a combination of causes between both Ubuntu and VirtualBox; certainly the piix4_smbus error at which I'm now stuck seems to point to VB, not Ubuntu? I didn't get this before upgrading.

[Michael Thayer]

The fact that you get errors after upgrading Ubuntu does not point at VirtualBox - even if that Ubuntu happens to be in a virtual machine. There are quite enough reasons why this can happen which do not involve VirtualBox. Again, if you wish to solve this issue for that particular virtual machine I can only suggest that you take it to the Ubuntu forums.

[John DeStefano]

michael, thanks for your help, but in my case, after working through all the OS upgrade issues, the only warning or error I am now left with is the one I mentioned above regarding PIIX, which was not there before the upgrade and persists now that the VM is working:

piix4_smbus 0000:00:07.0: SMBus base address uninitialized - upgrade BIOS or use force_addr=0xaddr

[Frank Mehnert]

Please ignore this warning, it is not fatal and does not lead to any misfunction. Getting rid of this warning by implementing the missing bits in the PIIX emulation is not worth the effort.

[Gary Evans]

Sorry for the delayed follow up. I finally found a solution to this.

It's a bit of a long URL, but it is at least descriptive. The simple steps given solved the problem for me.

​http://www.gubatron.com/blog/2011/10/20/solved-updated-to-ubuntu-11-10-on-virtualbox-and-now-you-get-a-blank-screen-when-you-reboot/comment-page-1/#comment-162437

I hope this is of some help to others.

[John DeStefano]

Thanks evansgp01. The advice there is simply to install 'virtualbox-ose-guest-utils', which is interesting for several reasons. I had the same problem as you, and I didn't install this package to fix the problem; instead, I repaired a run/lock problem and updated the package system. I also wonder why this would help at all, when the maintainer's description of this package is that it's "a dummy transitional package for virtualbox-guest-utils and can be safely removed after the installation is complete". How would this help in getting a broken system to boot, unless it's also installing other packages along with it as dependencies?

I should mentioned that, after fixing the problem and getting into a working Ubuntu 11.10 VB VM, I tried to install the guest additions via the usual VB method (Devices -> Install Guest Additions, then run the script), but this didn't do anything after a reboot.

[Gary Evans]

I have to admit that it wasn't entirely clear to me why this worked.

I have had problems before in which the guest additions stopped working after routine Ubuntu updates (as opposed to a full upgrade which was what I had done here). It seems that sometimes something (wish I had a clearer idea of what) corrupts / interferes with the guest additions. My approach in those cases is to remove the guest additions entirely by going to the settings dialog for the VM and deleting the guest additions iso altogether. I then create a new CD/DVD device and leave it empty. After starting the VM, I then use the device menu to install the guest additions again. So far this has worked and I have been able to successfully install the latest guest additions and have everything back up and running again.