Windows 7 Guest fails end of installation when using dynamic drive

[Dean Wallace]

When installing Windows 7 32bit using an ISO as source and with a dynamic vdi it gets to the end of copying files and gives an error with finding files. See screenshot ​http://www.duffydack.karoo.net/vbox.png Setting "Use Host I/O Cache" in the SATA controller options fixes this (thanks klaus-vb) I am using Ubuntu 10.04 64bit with ext4 partitions, 4gig ram, 1gig swap on a Dell Studio 1747 i7.

[Dean Wallace]

log file for windows 7 guest

[aeichner]

This is a bug in the ext4 filesystem not in VirtualBox.

[Dean Wallace]

I suspected it might be. Thanks for clearing it up. As I say it has a workaround, but I was asked to post a bug report from someone in irc.

[Klaus Espenlaub]

Still odd that it fails only with dynamic images. Is this bug in ext4 related to growing files or is it pure luck that the slightly different timing with fixed images hides the problem?

[Thomas Dziedzic]

I think this has something to do with dynamic expanding disks. I have similar random filesystem error / corruption problems on linux guests, running a variety of filesystems (ext2/3/4, reiserfs, xfs, jfs) and also, and the hosts are opensuse 11.2 ext4 and windows xp ntfs. I haven't tried the "enable host i/o cache" supposed fix yet.

[Thomas Dziedzic]

I enabled the host i/o cache and I haven't received any errors at all. Thanks for the temporary fix and I hope this bug gets fixed soon (next release?).

[aeichner]

3.2.6 enables the host I/O cache if the image is located on a ext4 or xfs partition. There are fixes on the LKML but it will take some time until the distributions will pick them up.