Ticket #4404 (closed defect: fixed)
Guest fails to boot about 75% of the time
Reported by: | stephanecharette | Owned by: | |
---|---|---|---|
Priority: | critical | Component: | guest smp |
Version: | VirtualBox 3.0.8 | Keywords: | |
Cc: | Guest type: | Linux | |
Host type: | Linux |
Description
VB3.0.0, host and guest are both Ubuntu 9.04 64-bit.
About 75% of the time, when I attempt to boot the guest, the guest's boot process is interrupted before the GNOME desktop comes up. This only started happening once I upgraded to VB 3.0.0. My linux guest then sits at a command-line window, with text such as:
[ 137.991145] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 2414097 init: Unable to execute "/sbin/getty" for tty1: Input/output error init: tty1 main process (1371) terminated with status 255 init: tty1 main process ended, respawning init: tty1 respawning too fast, stopped
If I click on Machine->Reset, the guest window freezes for about 30 seconds and VirtualBox pops up a window with the following text:
"The IDE async I/O thread remained busy after a reset, usually a host filesystem performance problem. ERROR ID: DevATA_ASYNCBUSY Severity: Warning"
If I power off the guest, then eventually I can get the guest to start correctly. Note that this guest uses ext4 (in case that makes a difference).
Attachments
Change History
comment:1 Changed 9 years ago by stephanecharette
I did two things to this VM:
- I changed the number of virtual CPUs down from 4 to 1
- I removed the VMWare tools installed in this image by running:
- sudo vmware-uninstall-tools.pl
(This virtual machine was originally obtained from someone who ran VMWare, not VB.)
Ever since I made those two changes, I've never once seen it hang on bootup.
I played around with the number of virtual CPUs to see the effect it had. This DELL physically has an Intel Core2 Quad CPU.
With 1, or 2 virtual CPUs for this guest, everything works fine.
Once I increase the virtual CPUs to 3 or 4, then I immediately get the "end_request: I/O error" messages and hangs on bootup.
comment:2 Changed 9 years ago by stephanecharette
I spoke too fast. I'm now also seeing it with 2 virtual CPUs. I've gone back to using just 1 virtual CPU to ensure the VM can boot without error.
comment:4 Changed 9 years ago by stephanecharette
This morning I installed 3.0.8, installed the 3.0.8 guest additions, and again increased the virtual CPUs from 1 to 4. I have not yet seen the hang-on-boot bug, but did notice that bootups of my Ubuntu 9.04 guest are now taking in the range of 5 minutes versus the seconds it used to take.
Looking at the changelog for 3.0.8...which change do you suspect fixed the hang-on-boot error I previously was seeing when SMP was enabled?