VirtualBox 5.0.51 - unknown error -1018 during initialization

[Andi B.]

Yesterday I updated on one of my systems the old VBox 1.6 installation to the latest 5.0.51. I also created a new virtual machine called 'WinXP_Banzai' with already working disk files (*.vdi) from another system. It worked yesterday. But I found out that this VBOX version needs a lot of lower shared RAM. 130MB - 170MB which pushes this system to the limits. Had to close some apps and reboot often but it worked yesterday. I tried to load high code segments of all vbox dlls but that does not help very much. VBox 1.6 seems to need less as it worked on this system for years.

Today when I try to start a virtual machine I get a error box with the message see subject. I got the same yesterday some times too but after a few tries it started. I've LIBCX_HIGHMEM=2 set. Attached the log.

I got this error when I start the machine with an object set to 'VBoxManage.exe startvm "WinXP_Banzai"'. Interestingly I could start the machine once from the VirtualBox.exe Manager Start button. But before I could see the log it crashed :-(

Log unsuccessful start -

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VirtualBox XPCOM Server 5.0.51_OSE r159 os2.x86 (Mar 22 2018 02:52:37) release log
00:00:00.008000 main     Log opened 2020-01-06T10:06:40.327000000Z
00:00:00.008000 main     Build Type: release
00:00:00.008000 main     OS Product: OS/2
00:00:00.008000 main     OS Release: 1
00:00:00.008000 main     OS Version: 2.45
00:00:00.008000 main     Host RAM: 3327MB total, 2453MB available
00:00:00.008000 main     Executable: P:\VIRTUALBOX5.0.51\BIN\VBOXSVC.EXE
00:00:00.008000 main     Process ID: 1345
00:00:00.008000 main     Package type: OS2_32BITS_GENERIC (OSE)
00:00:00.152000          Home directory: 'e:\HOME\DEFAULT/.VirtualBox'
00:00:00.162000          Loading settings file "e:\HOME\DEFAULT/.VirtualBox\VirtualBox.xml" with version "1.7-os2"
00:00:00.233000          HostDnsMonitor: old information
00:00:00.233000            no server entries
00:00:00.233000            no search string entries
00:00:00.233000            no domain set
00:00:00.233000          HostDnsMonitor: new information
00:00:00.233000            server 1: 195.3.96.67
00:00:00.233000            server 2: 213.33.98.136
00:00:00.233000            no search string entries
00:00:00.233000            domain: domain
00:00:00.233000          HostDnsMonitorProxy::notify
00:00:00.266000          VD: VDInit finished
00:00:00.279000          ERROR [COM]: aRC=NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005) aIID={0eb668d2-495e-5a36-8890-29999b5f030c} aComponent={SystemPropertiesWrap} aText={Cannot determine default Guest Additions ISO location. Most likely they are not available}, preserve=false aResultDetail=0
00:00:00.344000          Loading settings file "r:\W2k\W2k.xml" with version "1.3-os2"
00:00:00.416000          Loading settings file "r:\eCS2.0\eCS2.0.xml" with version "1.3-os2"
00:00:00.418000          Loading settings file "r:\WinXP_Banzai\WinXP_Banzai.vbox" with version "1.15-os2"
00:01:10.690000 Watcher  ERROR [COM]: aRC=NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005) aIID={f30138d4-e5ea-4b3a-8858-a059de4c93fd} aComponent={MachineWrap} aText={The virtual machine 'WinXP_Banzai' has terminated unexpectedly during startup with exit code 1 (0x1)}, preserve=false aResultDetail=0
00:01:15.789000 main     ERROR [COM]: aRC=VBOX_E_OBJECT_IN_USE (0x80bb000c) aIID={4afe423b-43e0-e9d0-82e8-ceb307940dda} aComponent={MediumWrap} aText={Medium 'r:\WinXP_Banzai\Snapshots/{d80d3bc7-9227-4ccf-8345-84cfeacfceb4}.vdi' cannot be closed because it is still attached to 1 virtual machines}, preserve=false aResultDetail=0
00:01:15.789000 main     ERROR [COM]: aRC=VBOX_E_OBJECT_IN_USE (0x80bb000c) aIID={4afe423b-43e0-e9d0-82e8-ceb307940dda} aComponent={MediumWrap} aText={Medium 'R:\WinXP\WinXP_Boot.vdi' cannot be closed because it is still attached to 1 virtual machines}, preserve=false aResultDetail=0
00:01:15.789000 main     ERROR [COM]: aRC=VBOX_E_OBJECT_IN_USE (0x80bb000c) aIID={4afe423b-43e0-e9d0-82e8-ceb307940dda} aComponent={MediumWrap} aText={Medium 'r:\WinXP_Banzai\Snapshots/{46b8216e-e107-429a-a4c5-2be610d29b83}.vdi' cannot be closed because it is still attached to 1 virtual machines}, preserve=false aResultDetail=0
00:01:15.789000 main     ERROR [COM]: aRC=VBOX_E_OBJECT_IN_USE (0x80bb000c) aIID={4afe423b-43e0-e9d0-82e8-ceb307940dda} aComponent={MediumWrap} aText={Medium 'R:\WinXP\WinXP_HD2.vdi' cannot be closed because it is still attached to 1 virtual machines}, preserve=false aResultDetail=0
00:01:15.789000 main     ERROR [COM]: aRC=VBOX_E_OBJECT_IN_USE (0x80bb000c) aIID={4afe423b-43e0-e9d0-82e8-ceb307940dda} aComponent={MediumWrap} aText={Medium 'r:\WinXP_Banzai\Snapshots/{4ac5ebdf-82ff-4800-8758-989971aacb20}.vdi' cannot be closed because it is still attached to 1 virtual machines}, preserve=false aResultDetail=0
00:01:15.789000 main     ERROR [COM]: aRC=VBOX_E_OBJECT_IN_USE (0x80bb000c) aIID={4afe423b-43e0-e9d0-82e8-ceb307940dda} aComponent={MediumWrap} aText={Medium 'R:\WinXP\WinXP_HD3.vdi' cannot be closed because it is still attached to 1 virtual machines}, preserve=false aResultDetail=0
00:01:15.799000 Watcher  ERROR [COM]: aRC=E_ACCESSDENIED (0x80070005) aIID={0169423f-46b4-cde9-91af-1e9d5b6cd945} aComponent={VirtualBoxWrap} aText={The object is not ready}, preserve=false aResultDetail=0
Log successful start. When I copied this text from OS/2 editor (MED) to clipboard the VM crashed -

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VirtualBox XPCOM Server 5.0.51_OSE r159 os2.x86 (Mar 22 2018 02:52:37) release log
00:00:00.009000 main     Log opened 2020-01-06T10:14:22.412000000Z
00:00:00.009000 main     Build Type: release
00:00:00.009000 main     OS Product: OS/2
00:00:00.009000 main     OS Release: 1
00:00:00.009000 main     OS Version: 2.45
00:00:00.009000 main     Host RAM: 3327MB total, 2437MB available
00:00:00.009000 main     Executable: P:\VIRTUALBOX5.0.51\BIN\VBOXSVC.EXE
00:00:00.009000 main     Process ID: 2273
00:00:00.009000 main     Package type: OS2_32BITS_GENERIC (OSE)
00:00:00.150000          Home directory: 'e:\HOME\DEFAULT/.VirtualBox'
00:00:00.160000          Loading settings file "e:\HOME\DEFAULT/.VirtualBox\VirtualBox.xml" with version "1.7-os2"
00:00:00.226000          HostDnsMonitor: old information
00:00:00.226000            no server entries
00:00:00.226000            no search string entries
00:00:00.226000            no domain set
00:00:00.226000          HostDnsMonitor: new information
00:00:00.226000            server 1: 195.3.96.67
00:00:00.226000            server 2: 213.33.98.136
00:00:00.226000            no search string entries
00:00:00.226000            domain: domain
00:00:00.228000          HostDnsMonitorProxy::notify
00:00:00.259000          VD: VDInit finished
00:00:00.273000          ERROR [COM]: aRC=NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005) aIID={0eb668d2-495e-5a36-8890-29999b5f030c} aComponent={SystemPropertiesWrap} aText={Cannot determine default Guest Additions ISO location. Most likely they are not available}, preserve=false aResultDetail=0
00:00:00.337000          Loading settings file "r:\W2k\W2k.xml" with version "1.3-os2"
00:00:00.410000          Loading settings file "r:\eCS2.0\eCS2.0.xml" with version "1.3-os2"
00:00:00.412000          Loading settings file "r:\WinXP_Banzai\WinXP_Banzai.vbox" with version "1.15-os2"
00:06:30.244000 Watcher  ERROR [COM]: aRC=NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005) aIID={f30138d4-e5ea-4b3a-8858-a059de4c93fd} aComponent={MachineWrap} aText={The virtual machine 'WinXP_Banzai' has terminated unexpectedly during startup with exit code 1 (0x1)}, preserve=false aResultDetail=0
00:06:34.109000          ERROR [COM]: aRC=VBOX_E_OBJECT_NOT_FOUND (0x80bb0001) aIID={edba9d10-45d8-b440-1712-46ac0c9bc4c5} aComponent={ExtPackManagerWrap} aText={No extension pack by the name 'Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack' was found}, preserve=false aResultDetail=0
00:10:45.748000          ERROR [COM]: aRC=VBOX_E_OBJECT_NOT_FOUND (0x80bb0001) aIID={edba9d10-45d8-b440-1712-46ac0c9bc4c5} aComponent={ExtPackManagerWrap} aText={No extension pack by the name 'Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack' was found}, preserve=false aResultDetail=0
00:13:09.705000 Watcher  ERROR [COM]: aRC=NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005) aIID={f30138d4-e5ea-4b3a-8858-a059de4c93fd} aComponent={MachineWrap} aText={The virtual machine 'WinXP_Banzai' has terminated unexpectedly during startup with exit code 1 (0x1)}, preserve=false aResultDetail=0
00:13:24.318000          ERROR [COM]: aRC=VBOX_E_OBJECT_NOT_FOUND (0x80bb0001) aIID={edba9d10-45d8-b440-1712-46ac0c9bc4c5} aComponent={ExtPackManagerWrap} aText={No extension pack by the name 'Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack' was found}, preserve=false aResultDetail=0
00:13:24.560000          ERROR [COM]: aRC=VBOX_E_IPRT_ERROR (0x80bb0005) aIID={f30138d4-e5ea-4b3a-8858-a059de4c93fd} aComponent={SessionMachine} aText={Saved screenshot data is not available (VERR_NOT_SUPPORTED)}, preserve=false aResultDetail=0
Rest of log after crash -

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00:14:54.126000 main     ERROR [COM]: aRC=VBOX_E_OBJECT_IN_USE (0x80bb000c) aIID={4afe423b-43e0-e9d0-82e8-ceb307940dda} aComponent={MediumWrap} aText={Medium 'r:\WinXP_Banzai\Snapshots/{d80d3bc7-9227-4ccf-8345-84cfeacfceb4}.vdi' cannot be closed because it is still attached to 1 virtual machines}, preserve=false aResultDetail=0
00:14:54.126000 main     ERROR [COM]: aRC=VBOX_E_OBJECT_IN_USE (0x80bb000c) aIID={4afe423b-43e0-e9d0-82e8-ceb307940dda} aComponent={MediumWrap} aText={Medium 'R:\WinXP\WinXP_Boot.vdi' cannot be closed because it is still attached to 1 virtual machines}, preserve=false aResultDetail=0
00:14:54.126000 main     ERROR [COM]: aRC=VBOX_E_OBJECT_IN_USE (0x80bb000c) aIID={4afe423b-43e0-e9d0-82e8-ceb307940dda} aComponent={MediumWrap} aText={Medium 'r:\WinXP_Banzai\Snapshots/{46b8216e-e107-429a-a4c5-2be610d29b83}.vdi' cannot be closed because it is still attached to 1 virtual machines}, preserve=false aResultDetail=0
00:14:54.126000 main     ERROR [COM]: aRC=VBOX_E_OBJECT_IN_USE (0x80bb000c) aIID={4afe423b-43e0-e9d0-82e8-ceb307940dda} aComponent={MediumWrap} aText={Medium 'R:\WinXP\WinXP_HD2.vdi' cannot be closed because it is still attached to 1 virtual machines}, preserve=false aResultDetail=0
00:14:54.126000 main     ERROR [COM]: aRC=VBOX_E_OBJECT_IN_USE (0x80bb000c) aIID={4afe423b-43e0-e9d0-82e8-ceb307940dda} aComponent={MediumWrap} aText={Medium 'r:\WinXP_Banzai\Snapshots/{4ac5ebdf-82ff-4800-8758-989971aacb20}.vdi' cannot be closed because it is still attached to 1 virtual machines}, preserve=false aResultDetail=0
00:14:54.126000 main     ERROR [COM]: aRC=VBOX_E_OBJECT_IN_USE (0x80bb000c) aIID={4afe423b-43e0-e9d0-82e8-ceb307940dda} aComponent={MediumWrap} aText={Medium 'R:\WinXP\WinXP_HD3.vdi' cannot be closed because it is still attached to 1 virtual machines}, preserve=false aResultDetail=0
00:14:54.132000 Watcher  ERROR [COM]: aRC=E_ACCESSDENIED (0x80070005) aIID={0169423f-46b4-cde9-91af-1e9d5b6cd945} aComponent={VirtualBoxWrap} aText={The object is not ready}, preserve=false aResultDetail=0
I guess the main problem is shortage of lower shared memory. After boot I've about 175MB free. Now with Seamonkey and the VirtualBox Manager (VirtualBox.exe) running there I have -

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pm: 248192 sm: 150464  <---512---> pm: 1376256 sm: 957428
Seems a bit less for current VBox.

Suggestions?

Btw. I can't read the readme at http://trac.netlabs.org/vbox/browser/trunk/doc/ReadMe-OS2.txt cause I constantly get -

Code: [Select]

Oops …
Trac hat einen internen Fehler festgestellt:

UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xc3 in position 28: ordinal not in range(128)
 ....


[Dave Yeo]

I can often get around that error by waiting a while (5 minutes?) between opening vbox and starting a virtual machine.
You might be able to reclaim some low memory by marking the QT dlls to load high.
I reported the readme error upstream though the readme is for 1.6 I believe.

[Andi B.]

Just checked another system where I use VBOX regularly without this problem. This system has installed 5.0.6_OSEr143. So is this a regression in newer versions?

[Valery Sedletski]

2AndiB: The -1018 error means VERR_INVALID_CPU_ID. You're not the first person which encounter this error. You're probably using an IBM's kernel.
IBM's kernels don't have a means to determine a CPU ID, which is calculated as an LAPIC ID by default by VBox. But VBox assumes CPU ID's to be
consecutive, which is not always true in case of LAPIC ID's. So, if they're not consecutive in your system, this error can occur. On some systems, like
mine, LAPIC ID's are consecutive (there is no hole). So, this error doesn't occur in my system. So, I'm lucky. Unfortunately, there is no reliable way
to determine a CPU ID on an IBM kernel. OS/4 kernel contains a KEE function to get a current CPU ID, so no such problem with it. So, I can advice
you using an OS/4 kernel here.

BTW, VT-x (a hardware virtualization) support is working with OS/4 kernel, only. So, this is another bonus of OS/4 kernel. OS/4 kernel is required
because of a "CPU rendezvous" KEE, needed to run code on all CPU's in parallel. IBM's kernel also lacks this feature,

PS: Version 5.0.6_OSEr143 seems to be very old, so it could not contain the SMP-related code. Or, probably, your second machine contains cores
with contiguous LAPIC ID's, like I have on my machines, so this error won't happen. Anyway, you can install an OS/4 kernel, and its PSD+ACPI
and we will see if your LAPIC ID's are contiguous. It should write about that in the kernel log.

[Andi B.]

Hi Valery,
LAPIC ID's are consecutive - this is an old Intel dual-core machine which is still my main system although it should have been retired since years. That said - it has to run every day and there's not much room for playing and testing with that. That's the reason why I've still used VBox1.6 on this system until a few days ago. APIC, APM, .... all works and have to run reliable every day. I run runs Holgers fixed/extended SMP kernel on this machine.

I'm willing to test OS/4 kernel again sometimes but not now and not on this system. But I can't spend much time for OS/4. There are more reasons why I can not invest much effort in testing with other kernels+acpi especially on this sytem. Maybe I can circumvent the 1018 error with mpunsafe. Otherwise I've to switch back to VBox1.6 on this machine.

Second machine which runs 5.0.6_OSEr143 - maybe old but for what I need it (banking software!) it works. If upgrading to a newer VBox version will lead to the same problem it's good that I didn't update this system too :-)

Anyway I think currently the biggest problem is the amount of lower shared memory VBox needs. I think we should find ways to reduce that at first.

Btw. a big THANK YOU for your work on VBox.

[Valery Sedletski]

2Andi B.:
> LAPIC ID's are consecutive - this is an old Intel dual-core machine which is still my main system although it should have been retired since years.
If so, then it may be not from {0, 1} set. VBox assumes that CPU ID's should be from a 0, ... Max. CPU ID set. If this is not true, this error could occur.
If you don't want to touch this machine, then you could leave everything as is, and use VBox r143 from your another machine. It should use a single
CPU only because of no SMP support in VBox.

Indeed, testing OS/4 kernel is easy thing. I cannot expect you can break much. And you can easily switch kernels with QSINIT or OS/4 loader. You
only need to replace the old IBM loader with new one, and set up your os2ldr.ini. You can boot the old kernel and newer kernels from the same menu.
And QSINIT is backward compatible with older kernels. It should even be able to load Warp3 kernels successfully (it was tested by its author). So,
there should be no problems here. At the extreme case, you can chainload on older os2ldr version with 'restart' directive.

> Anyway I think currently the biggest problem is the amount of lower shared memory VBox needs. I think we should find ways to reduce that at first.
The 1st thing you need is to set up correct values of VAL, THREADS and PROCESSES in your config.sys. Plus see if you did not used too much
JFS cache. For example, I have

THREADS=511
PROCESSES=128
VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT=3072
IFS=D:\OS2\JFS.IFS /LW:5,20,4 /AUTOCHECK:* /CACHE:128000

Here, 511 threads and 128 processes should be sufficient for most cases. The default values from config.sys are too big and allocate
about 200 MB for Thread control blocks and PTDA's, which may eat up much kernel memory. Also, here you can see 3 GB of VAL
and 128 MB of JFS cache. You need to check (with theseus) that there are some 100-200 MB of kernel memory left after these settings.

Plus, you can try loading most VBox DLL's to high memory. I prepared a highmem.cmd script for that in the VBox distribution for that.

[Dariusz Piatkowski]

I realize that this thread is a YEAR old by now...however, I recently started the work to get me a working VBox setup once again.

The setup here is composed of the officially available Netlabs release (vbox-os2-i386-v5.0.51.zip), although the d/l link actually points to ftp://osfree.org/upload/vbox/vbox-os2-i386-v5.0.51.zip

My physical hardware is AMD CPU based (Phenom II X6 - 6 core setup) running on MSI 890FXA-GD70 motherboard. OS/2 drive is a SSD device running in standard IDE mode (not AHCI).

Anwyas, alright here is what I have learned so far (most of it is largely known already):

1) installs where the HOST system has libcx 0.6.1 and later
- VBox can not be started unless 'SET LIBCX_HIGHMEM=2' is issued in the starting session, or it's part of CONFIG.SYS
- if you are seeing this error, you are hitting this issue:

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Failed to create the VirtualBoxClient COM object.

The application will now terminate.

Callee RC: NS_ERROR_ABORT (0x80004004)

2) the 'Enable VT-x / AMD-V' is not supported
- it must be turned OFF in the VM configuration if you are running the standard OS2KRNL
- it is purported to work if you run the OS4KRNL (I need to test this out still)

The reason for the failure point with #2 is well understood and documented. Valery has spelled this out multiple times, so I won't elaborate further. However, I have found what appears to be a work-around for those using the OS2KRNL. Keep in mind, I am just re-starting my VBox usage, so this may prove to be a bit of a "fool's gold"...

So here is the thing: in my setup attempting to just start a VM session, even with the VT-x/AMD-V shut off still produces the 1018 error...now what?

Well, I do NOT run the ACPI Power Manager on this OS2 HOST desktop, I simply have the CPU cores fully available at all times. What this does allow me to do is to go into a quasi single-core setup by shutting off all but a single CPU core. And here is the kicker, if I do that first and than start the VM session, all is good. The session comes up fine, immediately afterwards I can re-enable the previously shut OFF cores once again and I have my standard OS2 SMP functionality back.

I suspect this works b/c as Valery explained at the start of the VM the OS2KRNL does not provide a sequential CPU ID (simplifying here), of course with a quasi single-core config that is not an issue as there is only a single CPU core available.

Now the earlier "fool's gold" reference is regarding the fact that when the VM session is running (limitted to a single 1 CPU configuration) it may very well run into some issues when multiple HOST CPU cores are available. I have not found that to be the case quite yet, but again, just re-started my VBox testing, so while this work-around looks good at the moment, it may prove to be more of a smoke-show in the next couple of days.

For now...it works! And for those of you out there who are not able to run the OS4KRNL that may be a viable approach to running VBox.