Many tools don't start after upgrade of virtualbox-hwe

[Tom van Leeuwen]

I upgraded virtualbox-guest-dkms-hwe, virtualbox-guest-utils-hwe and virtualbox-guest-x11-hwe inside my Xbuntu 16.04 guest machine to 5.1.34-dfsg-0ubuntu1.16.04.2 . After the upgrade, I am unable to start many applications like zenity, users-admin menulibre and many more. With the previous version, everything worked fine.

I am using the latest version of VirtualBox as host (5.2.8 r121009 running on Ubuntu 16.04)

I re-created the Xubuntu guest using the xubuntu-16.04.4-desktop-amd64.iso image and everything works fine until I install the latest version (5.1.34-dfsg-0ubuntu1.16.04.2) of virtualbox-guest-*-hwe . I don't have the .deb files of the previous version. I do have a backup of the VM with previous version somewhere so I could check the version number and run some tests.

[Tom van Leeuwen (mrzx4l98d4tp89jab6giohdrjqysbyjs4npz2ccq25kvjmf5h8u4cmidcko7s4tfr6ur1teuv4ju1af4klpdqp0vd87ddz5sh53mwfrw5819ohmadctcbsrykdp4exz2w0xzyv54zb4ksnirbzfvybudw577zswcymukpheqeiptvlrx87cyumfa232omr5gcyxpni3rwgnjdqw38fhshrdw19z5s2fyst45o0e5sk2nk-ubuntu)]

I just installed virtualbox-guest-source-hwe instead of virtualbox-guest-dkms-hwe and that does not cause these problems (e.g. it works as expected) I don't really know what the advantage of one over the other is in real life, but it helps me out. Anyway, one would expect the virtualbox-guest-dkms-hwe module to work as well.

[Gianfranco Costamagna (costamagnagianfranco)]

Hello, installing the guest-source package has zero effect, unless you manually build the kernel module with module-assistant.

I don't understand why this upgrade broke your installation, you can take the previous binaries from here
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/virtualbox-hwe/5.0.40-dfsg-0ubuntu1.16.04.1~16.04.4

or upgrade to bionic and tell if something is broken there :)

[Gianfranco Costamagna (costamagnagianfranco)]

It might be due to some CPUs without VT-x instructions

[Gianfranco Costamagna (costamagnagianfranco)]

Can you please remove virtualbox-guest-x11-hwe and report back?

[Tom van Leeuwen (mrzx4l98d4tp89jab6giohdrjqysbyjs4npz2ccq25kvjmf5h8u4cmidcko7s4tfr6ur1teuv4ju1af4klpdqp0vd87ddz5sh53mwfrw5819ohmadctcbsrykdp4exz2w0xzyv54zb4ksnirbzfvybudw577zswcymukpheqeiptvlrx87cyumfa232omr5gcyxpni3rwgnjdqw38fhshrdw19z5s2fyst45o0e5sk2nk-ubuntu)]

I highly doubt that it has something to do with VT-x since both host and guest are x64, and VirtualBox does not support x64 guests without VT-x. Anyway, my CPU is i7-4510U.

There is an update for VirtualBox extension pack, I have not installed it yet.

I tried one more time:
-> Clean install Xubuntu 16.04.
-> Full update.
No automatic guest display resolution based on window size (but it does scale once during boot), no clipboard sharing. xfce4-display-settings segfaults if the current resolution is not one that is listed (otherwise works fine), xrandr -s works fine.

-> Snapshot.
-> Instal virtualbox-guest-x11-hwe
-> Reboot
This installs virtualbox-guest-dkms-hwe as a dependency. This is how I installed it in the first place.
Guest display resolution scaling works fine, as does clipboard sharing.
Problems as described above. I attached an strace of users-admin.

-> Revert to snapshot
-> Install virtualbox-guest-source-hwe
No effect - it is indeed not build
-> Install virtualbox-guest-x11-hwe and reboot (virtualbox-guest-dkms-hwe is not installed this time)
All kinds of errors in popups that VBoxClient can't access the kernel (ERR_ACCESS_DENIED)

Somehow I got it working last time, and I swear I saw the kernel module being build from apt.
I went back to the working machine and found indeed that virtualbox-guest-utils-hwe and virtualbox-guest-source-hwe are installed but virtualbox-guest-dkms-hwe not, but auto guest scaling and clipboard sharing does not work, so you're right about the source package doing nothing (except that it allows virtualbox-guest-x11-hwe to be installed without the dkms package).

I am unable to download the old binaries from the link you provided. The link "Binaries build by this source" just link to the latest. However, I am 100% sure it worked with the previous one since I heavily use zenity in my application so I was very surprised that my application didn't do anything any more after an update.

[Tom van Leeuwen (mrzx4l98d4tp89jab6giohdrjqysbyjs4npz2ccq25kvjmf5h8u4cmidcko7s4tfr6ur1teuv4ju1af4klpdqp0vd87ddz5sh53mwfrw5819ohmadctcbsrykdp4exz2w0xzyv54zb4ksnirbzfvybudw577zswcymukpheqeiptvlrx87cyumfa232omr5gcyxpni3rwgnjdqw38fhshrdw19z5s2fyst45o0e5sk2nk-ubuntu)]

One more addition (I can't edit it): Before I realized that I should have made a backup (since I didn't know the update caused the issue), I ran my application on another VM and it worked fine (e.g. Zenity started and no problems with indicator applets, configuration utilities etc). I then updated the machine and the same problems started to occur. So I am 100% sure that before the update it worked fine. I am now runing apt dist-upgrade, will let you know the results as soon as it is finished.

[Tom van Leeuwen (mrzx4l98d4tp89jab6giohdrjqysbyjs4npz2ccq25kvjmf5h8u4cmidcko7s4tfr6ur1teuv4ju1af4klpdqp0vd87ddz5sh53mwfrw5819ohmadctcbsrykdp4exz2w0xzyv54zb4ksnirbzfvybudw577zswcymukpheqeiptvlrx87cyumfa232omr5gcyxpni3rwgnjdqw38fhshrdw19z5s2fyst45o0e5sk2nk-ubuntu)]

If I enable 3d acceleration in VirtualBox and install virtualbox-guest-dkms-hwe, then everything works fine (even xfce4-display-settings with non-native resolution).

Bionic works fine, even with 3d acceleration disabled.

[Gianfranco Costamagna (costamagnagianfranco)]

Nice thanks! I think I'll close this one then :)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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