[vbox-dev] python: launchVMProcess(session, 'sdl', None) segfaults

[Francisco J. Vázquez]

I have this simple python program:

from vboxapi import VirtualBoxManager
vbox_mgr = VirtualBoxManager(None, None)
vbox = vbox_mgr.vbox
mgr = vbox_mgr.mgr
vms = vbox.getMachines()
session = mgr.getSessionObject(vbox)
vm = vms[0]
progress = vm.launchVMProcess(session, 'sdl', None)
progress.waitForCompletion(-1)

However, after the last line nothing happens. If I get the error info
from the progress object I get:

>>> print progress.errorInfo.text
The virtual machine 'Windows 98' has terminated unexpectedly during
startup because of signal 11
>>>

Calling VBoxSDL --startvm "Windows 98" from the command line works as
expected. Also, launching a headless session from python with

>>> progress = vm.launchVMProcess(session, 'headless', None)

works ok.

This is with the OSE version compiled in gentoo. I can't try the bin
version because VBoxPython2_7.so refuses to load:

>>> __import__("VBoxPython2_7")
Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ImportError: /opt/VirtualBox/VBoxPython2_7.so: undefined symbol:
PyUnicodeUCS2_AsUTF16String

I only have access to gentoo machines, so I can't try virtualbox-bin
to discard a compilation bug :(. I tried recompiling python with UCS2
and UCS4 unicode support, but failed.

Can anyone confirm that launching a SDL session from python works ok?

Thanks
Fran