Will VirtualBox b upgraded soon?

Brucehankins

WetGeek unclear, I don't see a MAINTAINERS.md file, so it may be lacking a maintainer to update it. Though it looks like members of the core team have been taking turns patching and updating over the last few commits.

https://dev.getsol.us/source/virtualbox/

WetGeek

Brucehankins it looks like members of the core team have been taking turns patching and updating over the last few commits

That must be the case, because it was upgraded with our last Solus update. Upgraded in 6.x, though, not 7.x. If someone on the team could move VirtualBox to version 7, it sure would be appreciated. I don't want to install it from the VirtualBox web site.

Staudey

WetGeek I suspect that these issues may be fixed by VirtualBox 7.02

Why do you think those issues are solved with version 7? I'm hesitant to update it because there have been two bugfix releases in short succession, which indicates to me that this (big) release might still be a bit buggy. Also we have to rebase a number of patches (or at least copy updated versions from somewhere 😃)

Since the last update caused issues for you, you could try and see if the old version works without problems:
sudo eopkg it https://packages.getsol.us/shannon/v/virtualbox/virtualbox-6.1.38-237-1-x86_64.eopkg
If so I'll consider reverting our VirtualBox package back to the old version

WetGeek

Staudey Since the last update caused issues for you, you could try and see if the old version works without problems

Yes, it does. I was able to launch my KaOS VM, start Konsole, and enter commands. Before I reverted, I could type nothing into a terminal on that VM. For several days now, I've been reduced to using Gnome Boxes, and it's surely great to have VirtualBox back again.

By the way, I didn't need to change the VM (which was created using the broken VirtualBox) in any way.

I'll certainly defer to your wisdom regarding when it's time to upgrade to 7.x. You have much more information available to you. Sounds like it might be a frying pan vs. fire issue. Thanks for your help with this!

WetGeek

Staudey Since the last update caused issues for you, you could try and see if the old version works without problems

Actually it was my Q4OS VM that I mentioned before. I'd mistakenly wrote KaOS, another distro I'd looked at recently.

Anyway, I just launched my Q4OS VM and was able to enter commands into Konsole without a problem. It's possible that the problem won't show up after a fresh startup, so i'm going to keep 6.1.40 for a while, to see if it happens again after I've used the VM for a while.

Thanks again for looking into this. I hate intermittent problems, and I hope this isn't one of those.

ReillyBrogan

Have you considered learning virt-manager? It's a bit more complicated to setup but because it uses KVM it tends to be more compatible between updates.

WetGeek

ReillyBrogan Have you considered learning virt-manager?

I installed it a couple years ago, when I was researching the various hypervisors. I remember that I couldn't get anywhere with it, but not details. Actually, it seems no more difficult to set up than does VirtualBox, but I just can't get a VM to work correctly using virt-manager.

After you mentioned it here, I decided to give it another try -- perhaps I'd given up too soon the last time. I decided to create a Q4OS VM, because I'd just done that again with VirtualBox, and the Plasma DE is my daily driver.

The first VM I created, I'd not noticed that it was defaulting to a 15GB system, and using 4GB of that for swap. When I noticed that during installation, I almost stopped and started again with more storage, but in the end, I went ahead with it. The result was a VM that prompted me with a logon screen, and after accepting my password, left me with a black screen and a locked-up system. Obviously, 15GB was enough to install the OS, but not enough to run it.

So I deleted that VM and started over, this time providing 32GB. That created a system with 8.2GB of swap. This time, the VM actually ran after the password was accepted, however it ran as 1024x768, the same size as the original "live" system that ran the installer. I used the Display and Monitor dialog from the System Settings to change that to 1920x1080. When I clicked [Apply], the image changed to that size and filled my laptop screen, but after about 500ms or so it reverted to 1024x768. The combobox in the settings dialog still indicated that resolution was set to 1920x1080, but that was incorrect.

So I deleted that VM and tried once more. I looked through the defaults for creating a VM, and made one change to do with the video manager, and decided to try UEFI this time. I gave the VM 4096 memory, 4 cores, and 32GB storage. Everything went exactly as it happened with the previous attempt. There was no way I could get a VM to display any larger than 1024x768.

At this point, I'm assuming that this is what I couldn't remember from the original time I tried to use virt-manager. After attempting three VMs this time, all failures, I think I've given it an honest try, and I'm not enthsiastic about working more with it. I was very happy with the way these VMs performed, but just could not live with a maximum display size that's not been popular since the 1990s.

tomscharbach

WetGeek I decided to create a Q4OS VM, because I'd just done that again with VirtualBox, and the Plasma DE is my daily driver.

Cool. Set up a Virtual Box Q4OS VM on Plasma, then set up a Virtual Box Windows VM on the Q4OS VM, and then use the Windows Installer to set up a Optimized VirtualBox Q4OS VM on the Windows VM. If that doesn't bring the house of cards tumbling down, nothing will. 😆

alfisya

WetGeek Q4OS VM

Does this VM uses Plasma DE ? If so, it happened to me too while spining up Solus Plasma on virt-manager. The screen resolution keep reverting back to 1024x768. I don't have any solution tough. Since I don't actually use Plasma, I never bothered to try other distro with it. Try install VM with another DE, it might works just fine. Still, virt-manager is more compatible with rolling-release as it doesn't need kernel module (AFAIK).

WetGeek

tomscharbach If that doesn't bring the house of cards tumbling down, nothing will.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm happy with the Q4OS VM that I created with VirtualBox. I was impressed with it the first time around (last August), but it's been a while and I wondered whether the 285 upgrades since then made any big differences. (It turns out, none that I noticed.)

WetGeek

alfisya Does this VM uses Plasma DE ?

Yes, and thanks for your confirmation. That's the DE I use with my daily-driver Solus system, so it's the one I'm most comfortable with. At this point, there's no way I'd adopt virt-manager to replace VirtualBox, so I'm not really interested in trying it with another distro with a different DE. Much of my exploration of other distros is done with Plasma editions, so there doesn't seem to be any reason to find out if it would work with a different DE.

WetGeek

@Staudey, The current update seems to have replaced VirtualBox with the bad version again:
"virtualbox is upgraded from 6.1.38-237-1-x86_64 to 6.1.40-238-1-x86_64."

Has anything actually been fixed in 6.1.40, or should I revert it to 6.1.38 again?

Staudey

WetGeek Nothing has changed in the meantime. If you still experience those issues, then yes, you should switch back.

Staudey

WetGeek Great, if 6.1.40 keeps working correctly, I'll just keep it as is. From the changelog it didn't really contain anything that would cause such issues. Could be that the updates to one of virtualbox' dependencies are troublemakers. Which would of course mean that a re-compile of 6.1.38 would probably show the same issues. Here's to hoping 6.1.40 works fine, and after the 7.0 situation has stabilized somewhat we will make the big update.