Upgrade must fail if VMs running

[helix84]

There was a guest running before upgrade from VB 2.2.2 -> 2.2.4 on Debian Lenny AMD64 (both host and guest). The host was started using VBoxHeadless --comment www --startvm ac682512-b596-4eff-9c07-a499a095e81a & After the upgrade the running host is not shown in VBoxManage list runningvms but the process is still running and guest is accessible. Also note "Cannot unload module vboxnetflt failed!".

There isn't anything in manual related to upgrades. I probably should save my guests before VB upgrade, but I tried not to.

Please fix this or document how to do upgrades in the manual.

$ VBoxManage list runningvms
VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 2.2.2
(C) 2005-2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc.
All rights reserved.

"www" {ac682512-b596-4eff-9c07-a499a095e81a}
$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages will be upgraded:
  virtualbox-2.2
1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 39.1MB of archives.
After this operation, 32.8kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?
Get:1 http://download.virtualbox.org lenny/non-free virtualbox-2.2 2.2.4-47978_Debian_lenny [39.1MB]
Fetched 39.1MB in 8s (4522kB/s)
Reading changelogs... Done
Preconfiguring packages ...
(Reading database ... 59669 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace virtualbox-2.2 2.2.2-46594_Debian_lenny (using .../virtualbox-2.2_2.2.4-47978%5fDebian%5flenny_amd64.deb) ...
Stopping VirtualBox kernel module:
Cannot unload module vboxnetflt failed!
Shutting down VirtualBox host networking:done..
Unpacking replacement virtualbox-2.2 ...
Setting up virtualbox-2.2 (2.2.4-47978_Debian_lenny) ...
Installing new version of config file /etc/init.d/vboxdrv ...
addgroup: The group `vboxusers' already exists as a system group. Exiting.
Stopping VirtualBox kernel module:
Cannot unload module vboxnetflt failed!
Starting VirtualBox kernel module:done..
ctenar@atlas:~$ VBoxManage list runningvms
VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 2.2.4
(C) 2005-2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc.
All rights reserved.

$ sudo netstat -tulpn | grep VBoxHeadless
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:3389            0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN      6314/VBoxHeadless

[helix84]

Still persists in 3.0.2 -> 3.0.4

[Frank Mehnert]

Actually the installer should abort if there is any VM running. A running VM will use the kernel driver which is upgraded during upgrade. The reason for your behavior is that we terminate the VBoxSVC server during upgrade because there might be a running instance even if there are no VMs active.

So, before upgrading VBox, please stop all your VMs.

[helix84]

Could you at least document this, please? There is nothing at all about upgrading in the manual.

It is logical to stop VMs before upgrading but the software shouldn't let you do the Bad Thing accidentaly.

[rusivi]

Downstream bug may be found at: ​https://bugs.launchpad.net/virtualbox/+bug/290000

While those who are familiar with VirtualBox for system administration purposes, know to stop their VMs & shut down VBox before upgrading, it is helpful for a check occurs that if any VMs and/or VBox is running, the upgrade fails gracefully.

[Frank Mehnert]

Hmm, AFAIR such a check was added some time ago so this bug should be already fixed...