Defective display when booting from 16.04 LiveCD (Ubuntu and Xubuntu) in Virtualbox

[intherye]

When booting from the 16.04 LiveCD (Xubuntu and Ubuntu) in Virtualbox the display is defective when the Language selection dialog and the LiveCD/Install Ubuntu choice should appear.

Defective display means (will attach a screenshot):
- no fonts or graphics visible
- strange colors
- display is wider than it should be (approx. factor two)
- when moving the mouse, I see a big defective mouse pointer

I'm using the amd64 ISOs on an amd64 Xubuntu 14.04 host with VirtualBox from the Ubuntu repos (Extensionpack from Oracle installed).

When changing with Host-key (right Ctrl in my case)+F2 to another console and switch back with Host-key-F1, the language selection screen is correctly displayed. The other consoles are unusable though. Note that the installer is on F1, not F7

Furthermore, if I enable EFI in the guest settings a grub menu appears with the Xubuntu ISO, where I can select Try/Install and the display works OK with these options. EFI with Ubuntu ISO gives me an EFI prompt, which I'm not familiar with.

This problem did not occur with the Xubuntu Betas and one of the last dailies.

[intherye (intherye)]

Some info to add:

I'm using an Asus UL80V laptop with nVidia Geforce G210M (hybrid) graphics card. The problem occurs both if I use nVidia or Intel graphics.

I also deinstalled the Virtualbox extensions and the problem persists.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Jan Rathmann (kaiserclaudius)]

I'm seeing this too when I try to boot the 16.04 release images with Virtualbox on a 16.04 host system (doesn't matter which flavour, I have tested Ubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu Mate so far). The arch of the host is amd64, this bug appears identically on i386 and amd64 guests.

I also can confirm that Beta 2 images are not affected. Perhaps some change to Xenial after Beta 2 release triggers a bug a Virtualbox?

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

From what I have seen, the last few releases have had severe problems similar to this when booting in a vm using a cirrus logic emulated display. Using a standard vga controller seems to work around the problem. Can you try using a standard vga controller in the vm and see if this works around the problem?

[intherye (intherye)]

I did not find an option to change the emulated graphics adapter in Virtualbox, also no hint in the documentation. The VGA adapter is reported as "Innotek Systemberatung GmbH VirtualBox Graphics Adapter" by lspci in the guest. The documentation mentions though the VGA adapter and EFI: https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch03.html#efividmode

I tried changing the chipset from PIIX3 to ICH9 in the guest, which made no difference regarding this issue (except the VM seemed much slower).

[Gianfranco Costamagna (costamagnagianfranco)]

Hi, can you please try to install in the "host" the xserver-xorg-legacy package?
also, please try to enable proposed pocket and give an apt-get dist-upgrade.

thanks

[Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e)]

After doing so, please set this bug status back to "confirmed".

[Rui Romano (rtra)]

For what it's worth, I'm also observing this bug on my Debian Jessie system with Virtualbox 5.0.20.

After I turned on 3D emulation the language selection menu and boot splash worked fine, but after Xfce is loaded I can only see a corrupted portion of the panel.

[Rui Romano (rtra)]

Activating EFI Boot on Virtualbox solves the issue for me.

[intherye (intherye)]

LocutusOfBorg, my VirtualBox-"host" is runnung Trusty; there is no "xserver-xorg-legacy" package. Also I enabled proposed and upgraded. That did not solve the issue. Any special upgrade you thought it might solve it?

[Gianfranco Costamagna (costamagnagianfranco)]

oops I meant guest not host, sorry!

BTW can it be this issue?
https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/12320

[intherye (intherye)]

As the problem occurs when booting the Live CD, I'm not sure how to test/reproduce it with installing another package.

The linked ticket from VirtualBox upstream does not seem related (I have disabled 3D and 2D acceleration).

I also made another test with the current Yakkety Daily Build Live ISO (Xubuntu). The problem is fixed there.

Are there any 16.04.1 dailies where I could check that?

[Gianfranco Costamagna (costamagnagianfranco)]

I'm afraid only yakkety has the live builds...

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/daily-live/current/

lets pospone this until 16.04.1 is out then

[actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666)]

I found this
https://www.youtube.com/shared?ci=kEPEwbI9OwI

Will try it later today

[actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666)]

I don't seem to have that tab enabled in my Virtualbox. Strange.

[intherye (intherye)]

@actionparsnip: as the youtube guy is using opensuse leap 42.1 he probably has VirtualBox 5.x, which looks different from 4.x which we have in Ubuntu 14.04.

At least I could not reproduce the solutions he gave.

[actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666)]

I'm getting the same issue in a Windows host using Virtualbox 5.x

[intherye (intherye)]

I still see that when running the recent Xubuntu 16.04.1 amd64 ISO (Virtualbox host is Xubuntu 14.04).

[Ubuntu QA Website (ubuntuqa)]

This bug has been reported on the Ubuntu ISO testing tracker.

A list of all reports related to this bug can be found here:
http://iso.qa.ubuntu.com/qatracker/reports/bugs/1574316

[actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666)]

Fine with Debian Jesse using XFCE.

[BALLOON (balloon)]

This might be a problem is specific to the host side or VirtualBox version.
When I use the Ubuntu flavors in VirtualBox that the BunsenLabs (Debian Jessie base, Openbox) to the host,
I have encountered this problem.

[Ryan Waddell (wearysky)]

Activating EFI boot (Settings->System->Motherboard) in my Virtual Machine appears to have fixed the issue for me as well (Windows 10, 64 bit, VirtualBox 5.1.2)