Cannot start a NEW virtual machine

[prefnet]

VirtualBox bug report...

Effective with 5.02 (vs. 4.3.20) Cannot start a NEW virtual machine. --startvm hangs indefinitely, process must be killed. VirtualBox GUI eventually shows "Creating process for virtual machine..." @ 0%, remains indefinitely.

Ruled out paravirtualization support, which was the only change in settings I could find from my existing vm's (which start fine).

Same result with all boot media (Network/Optical/Hard Disk).

No log file is created.

Relevent to the failure... A new HDD is created during the "create new vm" process. If an existing HDD is selected instead, it works. However, the new HDD is not faulty.

If the new HDD is removed, it will start. If the same new HDD is then reattached, it will also start, and all is well.

To reproduce the bug... Create a new vm with a new hard drive. The vm will not start.

Effective workaround... Create a new vm. If selecting an existing hard drive, you won't see the issue. If you need a new HDD, create it, but do not yet start the new vm.

Go into settings and remove the new HDD, then reattach it. Start the new vm and all is well.

[Frank Mehnert]

Weird. We are not able to reproduce. This is on Linux, which Linux distribution and which file system? Btrfs by any chance?

[prefnet]

I have been using Mint 17.1/Cinnamon. No btrfs, the usual ext4. My results per the above have been very consistent. If I simply remove and then immediately reattach the new HDD during the vm creation process, everything runs fine. Ignoring that workaround, they never start. Having said that, I will test a bit more. I'm on a different workstation now at another location - same specs. Thanks for looking into it.

[prefnet]

Same result on identical (more or less) second workstation. All things independently installed on some hardware differences. After removing 4.3.30 and installing 5.0.2, this begins. The workaround is quite painless and reliable, but it took hours of trying different things to find it.

[prefnet]

Update: Perhaps this will be important. I have always been root while doing this. While doing the same as a non-root user, the problem goes away.

[prefnet]

Update: This problem persists with identical results in 5.0.4.