Boinc Projects that use Virtualbox crash since Upgrade to 22.04.1

[Graham Jenkins]

After an update from Xubuntu 20.04 to 22.04.1 last week I find that normal Boinc tasks like "NumberFields@home" continue to behave as expected, and normal Virtualbox guests like FreeBSD, NetBSD and Alma Linux continue to behave as expected.

But Boinc Rosetta@home tasks hang immediately and indefinitely with message: "Communication with VM Hypervisor failed".

And 8-CPU Boinc LHC@home fail after 12 seconds with message: "Computation error (8CPUs)".

I've re-installed boinc-virtualbox, Reset the offending projects, and confirmed that virtualization is enabled in hardware.

I've seen exactly the same behavior on another (i5-3470S) running the same OS and same Boinc and Virtualbox packages.

--
> lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS
Release: 22.04
--
> apt-cache policy boinc-virtualbox
boinc-virtualbox:
  Installed: 7.18.1+dfsg-4
  Candidate: 7.18.1+dfsg-4
  Version table:
 *** 7.18.1+dfsg-4 500
        500 http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/ubuntu/archive jammy/multiverse amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
--

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 22.04
Package: boinc-virtualbox 7.18.1+dfsg-4
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.15.0-46.49-generic 5.15.39
Uname: Linux 5.15.0-46-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu82.1
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: pass
CurrentDesktop: XFCE
Date: Tue Aug 16 19:51:49 2022
InstallationDate: Installed on 2021-05-03 (470 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Server 20.04.2 LTS "Focal Fossa" - Release amd64 (20210201.2)
SourcePackage: boinc
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to jammy on 2022-08-11 (4 days ago)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Graham Jenkins (grahjenk)]

Any estimate on when this might be fixed?

[Gianfranco Costamagna (costamagnagianfranco)]

Hello, please try virtualbox 6.1.38 in proposed pocket.

[Graham Jenkins (grahjenk)]

Thanks. I tried that today, and got exactly the same result ..

Boinc Rosetta@home tasks hang immediately and indefinitely with message: "Communication with VM Hypervisor failed".

And 8-CPU Boinc LHC@home fail after 12 seconds with message: "Computation error (8CPUs)".

Should I leave 6.1.38 in place, or revert to the 22.04 distribution release?

[Gianfranco Costamagna (costamagnagianfranco)]

I think you should ask boinc upstream on github
https://github.com/BOINC/boinc

[Graham Jenkins (grahjenk)]

Thanks Gianfranco. I've replaced to 22.04.1 version of the 'boinc-client.service' file with the 20.04.3 version .. whose only difference is that it declares "PrivateTmp=true". And this seems to have resolved the issue.

Perhaps the next version off the 'boinc' package could be modified accordingly?

[Graham Jenkins (grahjenk)]

And there's a remaining issue. Multi-CPU LHC Atlas jobs seize their required number of CPUs, but only execute on one CPU, leaving the others unavailable for other jobs.

Upgraded Virtualbox to 6.1.38 (from Ubuntu Proposed packages); seems to be working more-or-less as expected (using all CPUs most of the time) now.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for boinc (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]