use of VBoxHeadless causes hard kernel crash on CentOS when dealing with SATA disks

[kevin clark]

When I use VBoxHeadless, I have a totally repeatable test case that causes my host operating system to completely crash. I am fairly certain that this problem has something to do with the VM's use of SATA disks, because I have been a nearly identical configuration that uses IDE disks that I have been using now for at least a month. When I migrated my process to use SATA disks, I immediately encountered this crash.

Relevant info:

The VirtualBox version I am running comes from these two files:

VirtualBox-4.0-4.0.4_70112_rhel5-1.x86_64.rpm Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-4.0.4-70112.vbox-extpack

Host OS: CentOS 5.4

uname -a = "Linux testbox.bradfordnetworks.com 2.6.18-164.el5 #1 SMP Thu Sep 3 03:28:30 EDT 2009 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux"

Here are the commands that I enter to reliably cause a crash:

$ ssh -X 192.168.55.66
Last login: Wed Mar  2 10:14:34 2011 from 192.168.70.80
$
$ VBoxManage unregistervm --delete 'Test Appliance'
$ VBoxManage createvm --name 'Test Appliance' --ostype Linux --register
Virtual machine 'Test Appliance' is created and registered.
UUID: 79c68136-c2c9-4825-b5ed-4222cd2c7460
Settings file: '/home/kclark/VirtualBox VMs/Test Appliance/Test Appliance.vbox'
$ VBoxManage modifyvm 'Test Appliance' --memory 768 --acpi on --boot1 dvd
$ VBoxManage modifyvm 'Test Appliance' --nic1 nat
$ VBoxManage modifyvm 'Test Appliance' --nic2 nat
$ VBoxManage modifyvm 'Test Appliance' --ioapic on
$ VBoxManage modifyvm 'Test Appliance' --cableconnected1 on --mouse ps2 --keyboard ps2 --vrde on --vrdeport 3389 --vrdeauthtype null
$ VBoxManage createhd --filename test_appliance.vdi --size 50000
0%...10%...20%...30%...40%...50%...60%...70%...80%...90%...100%
Disk image created. UUID: 967b4471-3016-4191-b3cc-20906d4770f3
$ VBoxManage storagectl 'Test Appliance' --name 'SATA Controller' --add sata
$ VBoxManage storageattach 'Test Appliance' --storagectl 'SATA Controller' --port 0 --device 0 --type hdd --medium test_appliance.vdi
$ VBoxManage storageattach 'Test Appliance' --storagectl 'SATA Controller' --port 1 --device 0 --type dvddrive --medium /path/to/some/nfs/directory/ISO/CentOS_5.4_Final.iso
$ 
$ 
$ VBoxManage startvm 'Test Appliance' --type headless
Waiting for the VM to power on...
VM has been successfully started.

[around two seconds elapse at this point]

$ 
$ 
$ Write failed: Broken pipe

[and now the CentOS 5.4 host system is completely crashed]

I will attach a picture I took of the console with the crash dump.

Since I have this, here is a log of me upgrading my version of VirtualBox on this CentOS 5.4 machine:

$ sudo rpm -Uvh VirtualBox-4.0-4.0.4_70112_rhel5-1.x86_64.rpm 
Password: 
warning: VirtualBox-4.0-4.0.4_70112_rhel5-1.x86_64.rpm: Header V4 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 98ab5139
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:VirtualBox-4.0         ########################################### [100%]

Creating group 'vboxusers'. VM users must be member of that group!

No precompiled module for this kernel found -- trying to build one. Messages
emitted during module compilation will be logged to /var/log/vbox-install.log.

Stopping VirtualBox kernel modules [  OK  ]
Uninstalling old VirtualBox DKMS kernel modules [  OK  ]
Trying to register the VirtualBox kernel modules using DKMS [FAILED]
  (Failed, trying without DKMS)
Recompiling VirtualBox kernel modules [  OK  ]
Starting VirtualBox kernel modules [  OK  ]
$

I will mention one other thing with regards to this ticket: when I reproduce this exact test with the same version of VirtualBox on a fairly vanilla x86_64 box that runs Fedora 14, everything works.

[kevin clark]

vboxheadless crash picture

[kevin clark]

I am adding the output of /proc/cpuinfo (from the crashing host machine) in case this helps.

[kevin clark]

/proc/cpuinfo from crashing host machine

[kevin clark]

vbox install log mentioned in rpm install

[Frank Mehnert]

Could you add the proper VBox.log file from that VM session?

[kevin clark]

VBox.log from crashed session