Author Topic: VirtualBox problems  (Read 54042 times)

Pete

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VirtualBox problems
« on: March 22, 2018, 05:29:44 pm »
Hi All

After a long time of not using vbox I decided to "hookup" the already installed package to ArcaOS. This simply involved creating a Desktop object to start vbox with, adding vboxdrv.sys and rebooting.

During reboot - several attempts - boot stops with ifx checking and cleaning ini files.

I REM'd the ifx line as I do not hink that is the problem and rebooted. Boot now stops displaying pmshell.exe as the last line on screen.

It seems something in ArcaOS does not like vboxdrv.sys...

I tried updating acpi to 3.23.07 with no change, boot stops as before.


I have not really used either of my eCS installations since installing ArcaOS but decided to try booting eCS2.1 with various ArcaOS Driver Pack updates. Boot stops with a SYS1201: vboxdrv.sys not installed.

The same problem with eCS2.2b2 - which surprised me as ecS2.2b2 is the system that was in use when I first installed and used VirtualBox successfully.

Both eCS installations are using acpi 3.23.05 and os2krnl 14_106 SMP

Checking my backups I see that when I first installed and used VirtualBox in eCS2.2b2 I was using acpi 3.23.03. I had updated acpi to 3.23.05 in my eCS2.2b2 installation shortly before installing and concentrating on ArcaOS and suspect that I never tried running VirtualBox after the acpi update.

Here I must admit to being a little "naughty" and installing the 14_201 SMP kernel and acpi 3.23.06 in eCS2.2b2 to test whether that would make a difference ; Would eCS2.2b2 boot past the ifx/pmshell boot stop that ArcaOS has?

The answer is that eCS2.2b2 boots to a working Desktop without problems with those files installed. It cannot run VirtualBox though and delivers this error message

   Failed to create the VirtualBoxClient COM object.
 
   The application will now terminate.


   Callee RC: NS_ERROR_ABORT (0x80004004)


This error happens with the vboxdrv.sys supplied in r141 and the later version from ftp://osfree.org/upload/vbox/vboxdrv.zip

Interesting that eCS2.2b2 can boot to a working Desktop using those "naughty" updates though where ArcaOS cannot.


Does anyone have VirtualBox running OK with ArcaOS?

Any thoughts on the above problems, anyone?


Regards

Pete





Pete

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Re: VirtualBox problems
« Reply #1 on: March 22, 2018, 07:03:16 pm »
Hi All

There is an even later vboxdrv.sys just uploaded ftp://osfree.org/upload/vbox/vboxdrv.zip so I thought I would give it a try.

No change, ArcaOS stops at the IFX ini  check.

I rebooted and tried using Shift just as IFX was about to run. That brought up the IFX options. As there would not be any point in selecting any of the ini backups I selected 0, no changes to ini files .

Boot continued and ArcaOS got to a working Desktop. Does this suggest some sort of timing error?


Sadly virtualbox still does not run displaying this error

    Failed to create the VirtualBoxClient COM object.
 
   The application will now terminate.


   Callee RC: NS_ERROR_ABORT (0x80004004)


Any thoughts?


Regards

Pete

Doug Bissett

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Re: VirtualBox problems
« Reply #2 on: March 22, 2018, 07:48:08 pm »
Quote
Any thoughts on the above problems, anyone?

I run the old VBox 1.6.1, and the beta 5.0.6, under ArcaOS. No unexpected problems. The won't run OS/2, because you need VT-x/AMD-V enabled, and the OS/2 versions of VBox can't do that (be sure that the option is turned off). You can run a 64 bit OS, as a guest, but it will be dead slow, so don't bother even trying (like 12 hours to boot win 7 64 bit).

Quote
There is an even later vboxdrv.sys just uploaded ftp://osfree.org/upload/vbox/vboxdrv.zip so I thought I would give it a try

The driver should match the version that you are running.

Two other suggestions:

1) Be sure that VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT is set high enough, so you don't run out of virtual address space. I use 2560. 2048 doesn't seem to do the job, and some systems won't work with 3072. This setting has nothing, at all, to do with physical memory.

2) Sort your CONFIG.SYS properly. I use my Logical Config.Sys Sort program (LCSS), which is at HOBBES.

Dave Yeo

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Re: VirtualBox problems
« Reply #3 on: March 22, 2018, 08:18:05 pm »
I'm using the original driver dated 11/10/16, same as the most of the files, no problem booting but attempting to run virtualbox.exe gives the same error as you get in nspr.
Looking at ANPM, seems nspr-legacy was updated at the same time as nspr and attempting to down level results in an error about nspr needing down leveled as well. Need the latest nspr for Mozilla.
I've updated the driver and will test booting with it and also test downgrading both nspr and nspr-legacy after rebooting.

Dave Yeo

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Re: VirtualBox problems
« Reply #4 on: March 22, 2018, 09:01:54 pm »
Updating the driver still allows booting. Running virtualbox.exe still results in the same error. Reviewing the readme, it looks like I was wrong about nspr-legacy being a dependency, I guess it is actually a xpcom error and virtualbox includes its own build of xpcom, VBoxXCOM.dll. So no idea what, if any, upgrade broke virtualbox.

BTW, about your ifx error. I saw dmt (the eCS version of ifx) hangs in the past with eCS but none with ArcaOS. Doug might have a point in the ordering in config.sys.

David McKenna

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Re: VirtualBox problems
« Reply #5 on: March 22, 2018, 09:25:30 pm »
 Take a look at : http://trac.netlabs.org/vbox/ticket/73

  The issue is the latest libcx 0.6.1. VirtualBox will work with version 0.6.0, but needs a switch to work with 0.6.1. You can also put version 0.6.0 in the VirtualBox directory, and use Run! to start it LIBPATHSTRICT.

Pete

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Re: VirtualBox problems
« Reply #6 on: March 22, 2018, 10:31:43 pm »
Hi All

Problems resolved - well, VirtualBox now starts, I have not yet tried starting an existing guest or installing a new one. I may well install the latest vbox before attempting either as it seems to have just appeared here ftp://osfree.org/upload/vbox/vbox-os2-i386-v5.0.51.zip

The resolution to the "timing problem" with the vboxdrv.sys was to move the line higher up the config.sys file - no problem booting now, no need to use Shift as IFX is starting.

Thanks to David McKenna for his input re: libcx as adding SET LIBCX_HIGHMEM=2 to config.sys allows VirtualBox to start.

@Doug
I have not used your config.sys sorter on my ArcaOS system. I wish I had thought about it when I decided that the ArcaOS config.sys was a pain and needing sorting out. I re-arranged the config.sys to more or less match my ecS2.2b2 config.sys layout. Did eCS use LCSS?


Regards

Pete

Doug Bissett

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Re: VirtualBox problems
« Reply #7 on: March 23, 2018, 05:17:50 am »
Quote
Did eCS use LCSS?

LCSS should work with any version of OS/2, but it has only been tested with eCS, and ArcaOS. Testing on eCS will cease (I don't use it any more), but it should continue to work. Please, READ the instructions, if you use it. You may wish to tweak your CONFIG.SYS to retain comments.

Valery Sedletski

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Re: VirtualBox problems
« Reply #8 on: March 23, 2018, 08:54:21 am »
2Pete:

Quote
I have not really used either of my eCS installations since installing ArcaOS but decided to try booting eCS2.1 with various ArcaOS Driver Pack updates. Boot stops with a SYS1201: vboxdrv.sys not installed.

The same problem with eCS2.2b2 - which surprised me as ecS2.2b2 is the system that was in use when I first installed and used VirtualBox successfully.

Both eCS installations are using acpi 3.23.05 and os2krnl 14_106 SMP

Hm, VBoxDrv.sys doesn't install? I can't imagine why this can happen. Tried many kernels and PSD drivers -- never seen this. Could
you try to help me to track why this happen? So, this happens with 14.106_SMP and ACPI.PSD 3.23.05? I tested this combination, and everything booted well. I tested it in MCP2 and eCS 2.2 beta II, on a single-core Athlon 64 machine and two Core2Duo machines -- all worked well. Can you give me more details? Did you installed any other updates except the kernel and ACPI.PSD? Are you sure it was ACPI 3.23.05? Maybe, it was some other version? (also, it's possible that AN has different builds having the same version number, which behave differently. We can exchange more bldlevel details. For example, the copy of ACPI.PSD 3.23.05 I have is built 1 Feb 2017 12:52:11. Does your copy differ?)

Quote
Failed to create the VirtualBoxClient COM object.
 
   The application will now terminate.


   Callee RC: NS_ERROR_ABORT (0x80004004)

This happens when VBox cannot load VBoxRT.dll or some other DLL. This is usually because some dependent DLL's installed via rpm packages are missing, or are different version. You could try to update, or better, remove the DLL's listed here: http://trac.netlabs.org/vbox/ and install them over. This is basically the same problem as with newer versions of Mozilla, when some DLL's XUL.DLL depends on, are missing or incorrect version.

2Doug Bissett:

Quote
I run the old VBox 1.6.1, and the beta 5.0.6, under ArcaOS. No unexpected problems. The won't run OS/2, because you need VT-x/AMD-V enabled, and the OS/2 versions of VBox can't do that (be sure that the option is turned off). You can run a 64 bit OS, as a guest, but it will be dead slow, so don't bother even trying (like 12 hours to boot win 7 64 bit).

OS/2 versions of VBox since about r147 support hardware assisted virtualization. I was able to run OS/2 guest on OS/2 host successfully. 64-bit OS'es currently don't run ok. Most probably, you will get a hang. But it is still being worked on. Though, because of limitations of IBM kernels, this is currently supported on OS/4 kernels, only. They have some required mechanisms like API's for running some code on all CPU's in parallel, getting the current CPU number etc.

How did you managed to run a 64-bit OS? On which VBox version? I was unable to run a 64 bit OS neither in RAW mode, nor with HW virtualization.

2Dave Yeo: This error does nothing with NSPR. It is just a failed COM object initialization because it cannot load a DLL. NS_ERROR_ABORT seems to be an XPCOM error, not NSPR. Also, VBox doesn't use NSPR from yum repo. It carries its own version of NSPR based on VBox Runtime (IPRT, Innotek Portable RunTime) with itself.

Quote
BTW, about your ifx error. I saw dmt (the eCS version of ifx) hangs in the past with eCS but none with ArcaOS. Doug might have a point in the ordering in config.sys.

I never seen this in my eCS with DMT. Also, I have no idea how IFX/DMT can hang, or not, depending on VBoxDrv position in config.sys. I suspect this is some SMP-related problem, though.

2Pete*2:

Quote
The resolution to the "timing problem" with the vboxdrv.sys was to move the line higher up the config.sys file - no problem booting now, no need to use Shift as IFX is starting.

Probably, this is indeed some timing problem, so before VBoxDrv "settles a bit", i.e., finishes some activity, and activity done by IFX, should pass some time. An idea may be that VBoxDrv and IFX do something at the same time, but on different CPU's. This somehow leads to a hang. Currently SMP support in VBoxDrv is limited on IBM kernels. IBM kernels have no API returning the current CPU number. So, this is currently emulated with finding the current local APIC number. But LAPIC numbers are not guaraneteed to be consecutive. The may be "holes" between valid LAPIC numbers. So, if an attempt to use an invalid CPU number from the hole in the range 0..MaxCPUNumber is made, an unexpected result can happen, e. g., a hang. So, this currently works reliably only on OS/4 kernels, where an API exist returning a correct CPU number from a contiguous range. VBox assumes that the range 0..MaxCPUNumber should be contiguous.

PS: I never sort CONFIG.SYS automatically, because I prefer to edit it manually. So, I have it being sorted out logically, grouping related statements together. This is easier to support, with a little performance impact. I always placed the VBoxDrv.sys loading string at the end of CONFIG.SYS.

Pete

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Re: VirtualBox problems
« Reply #9 on: March 24, 2018, 03:32:29 am »
Hi Valery

I am not at all concerned that about the vboxdrv.sys "not installed" when booting eCS2.1 as I rarely boot that installation these days. it is possible that the problem is, yet again, the position in the config.sys file; I will have a rummage sometime over the weekend and try to establish what the problem is.

As regards acpi bldlevel: It was 3.23.05 which I have just updated to 3.23.07 to see if that will make a difference. The acpi.psd from 3.23.05 is:-
Vendor:          Arca Noae LLC
Revision:        3.23.05
Date/Time:       1 Feb 2017 12:52:37

Hardware is centered around an AMD FX-4300 4core CPU.

I have not yet had time to test but suspect that the using the SET LIBCX in the eCS2.2b2 config.sys file may well resolve the problem - eCS2.1, eCS2.2b2 and ArcaOS share the "*nixy libs" and that setting resolved the same problem in ArcaOS with starting VirtualBox.exe


Regards

Pete

Pete

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Re: VirtualBox problems
« Reply #10 on: March 24, 2018, 05:48:51 am »
Hi All

Seems the problem with eCS2.1 not being able to load vboxdrv.sys was the position of the DEVICE line in the config.sys file as moving it nearer the top of the file has solved the problem.

I am very pleased to report that virtualbox now runs from all 3 installations: eCS2.1, eCS2.2b2 and ArcaOS

All 3 installations need the SET LIBCX_HIGHMEM=2 setting in the config.sys file otherwise virtualbox.exe cannot start and displays the " Failed to create the VirtualBoxClient COM object." error.


Regards

Pete

Valery Sedletski

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Re: VirtualBox problems
« Reply #11 on: March 24, 2018, 06:58:08 am »
OK. LIBCX_HIGHMEM=2 is not needed for VirtualBox.exe. VirtualBox.exe should run fine without that. It only required for VBoxSDL, as there is some high memory-related problem with SDL.

Dave Yeo

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Re: VirtualBox problems
« Reply #12 on: March 24, 2018, 07:17:49 am »
I see the same issue with vbox, including v5.0.51 that I downloaded tonight. Previous testing showed LIBCX_HIGHMEM=2 as a fix, haven't tried with that setting yet with the most recent. VboxSDL crashes in libc

Pete

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Re: VirtualBox problems
« Reply #13 on: March 24, 2018, 03:31:51 pm »
Hi Valery

Sorry to correct you but re-testing without the LIBCX setting results in virtualbox.exe being unable to start with " Failed to create the VirtualBoxClient COM object."

This applies to both v5.06 and 5.0.51 releases.


Regards

Pete

Mark Szkolnicki

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Re: VirtualBox problems
« Reply #14 on: March 29, 2018, 04:23:28 am »
Heh all!

I have used the OS/2 based Virtual PC, latest version (v5.1?) for years, and had decided to try VirtualBox 5.0.6 when it originally came out, but got sidetracked. Seeing the release of v5.0.51 at the beginning of the week, and having some time to try it, I downloaded that version and installed it using the instructions supplied with the v5.0.6 version (couldn't find a Read_Me in the new version). The machine I am using is a 3.0 GHz 4 core AMD with ArcaOS v5.0.1 installed

I'm not sure if it was good luck or good management, based on the comments here, but VBox came up immediately, after install and a eboot. I created both a Windows 7 VM (which I have not installed to yet), and a Windows XP VBox VM, using a virtual disk (VDI) I had created for Windows version VirtualBox 5.0.22, on a Windows 7 based portable.

Both VM's are recognized by VirtualBox, but when I attempt to boot them, more times than not I get a message "Unknown error 1018 - during initialization of the runtime" (JPG attached). The detail screen comes up with a message that "The Virtual Machine WindowsXP has terminated unexpectedly during start-up with an exit code 1 (0x1) in Component "MachineWrap" (JPG attached).

This does not occur ever time, as I can boot the WindowsXP VM, especially if I use "Machine - Start -  Normal Start" from the Menu Bar, but, after multiple boots of both VM's in VirtualBox, the results vary.

I was wondering the following:

1) Has anyone encountered that problem starting up a VBOX VM session? (It seems to occur with both the Window XP VDI and the Windows 7 VM that I have not installed yet,)

Is there a workaround?

Following the thread, I tried Doug Bisset's suggestion of increasing VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT in Config.Sys to 2560, which was intended to start VBOX but saw no difference.

2) Would the installation of Virtual Box additions speed up the VM? I do have an ISO that I downloaded many months ago entitled "VBoxGuestAdditionsGuestAdditions_5.0.6.iso, which is obviously for the previous release for a OS/2 host, but I'm unaware of anything later, at the moment. Would that increase speed on the installed VM, as, currently, the Windows XP VM I am testing renders the Windows desktop extremely slowly.

As this is just me testing the new release, I would be interested in any comments anyone may have and Best!

Mark
Vincit Que Se Vincit - "He Who Conquers Self Succeeds"