Pressing on the 'Settings' button crashes the X server (nVIDIA libglx.so)

[danielsender]

I am running VB 4.2.4 on a Dell M70 Precision running Centos 6.3. The guest systems are XP and Centos 4.8. Both of these systems run OK, however if I press the 'Setting' button in the GUI it would crash and restart the machine. If I start VB from a terminal it would not write anything until it crashes, when it writes the following line:

<unknown>: Fatal IO error 4 (Interrupted system call) on X server :0.0.

I'm attaching the log files.

Thanks.

[Frank Mehnert]

To be sure: Do you really say that the host (that is the machine where VirtualBox is running on) reboots when you press the 'Settings' button in the VM settings?

[danielsender]

Yes, it does. You see the progress bar going from left to right and comes back with the login window. One more piece of information: if I press the 'Settings' icon while the guest is running then the problem doesn't happen, only when VM is running BEFORE I 'start' the guest, which is the situation when you want to run the settings - while the guest is running most of the setting options are grayed out (as expected).

Thanks

[forrest.tiffany]

As another point of reference, I am having the same issue. If a VM is running, I can go into the settings for the VM. If the VM is not running it crashes XWindows. (Note: you see the progress bar, but it isn't really a complete reboot, just a restart of init 5 processes.)

I am using a Dell Latitude E6520 with an NVidia graphics card (nvidia driver from rpmfusion). I am running Fedora 17 with the latest packages as my host OS. I have the RPM for VirtualBox from ​http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/rpm/fedora/$releasever/$basearch.

It doesn't matter if you go to the settings from the button or from the "right-click" menu off of any of the powered off machines. I have several guest OS's and they all exhibit the same behavior. I noticed this issue about a week ago, but it may have gone on longer as there isn't often a need to change settings on VM's that are already set up. I did try an older version of VirtualBox and an older kernel. Neither of those things helped. I have not investigated the possibility of older versions of Xorg fixing the issue.

[Frank Mehnert]

The only reason I can imagine is the VBoxTestOGL application which tests if there is 3D support available on this host or not.

Could you do the following:

1. Check where VBoxTestOGL is installed. On Fedora and CentOS, do

   rpm -ql !VirtualBox-4.2 | grep VBoxTestOGL
   

2. Rename this file to VBoxTestOGL.orig (as root).
3. Create a link VBoxTestOGL => /bin/false. For example, if VBoxTestOGL resides in /usr/lib/virtualbox then do

   cd /usr/lib/virtualbox
   mv VBoxTestOGL VBoxTestOGL.orig
   ln -s /bin/false VBoxTestOGL
   

Then try if you can reproduce the crash.

[danielsender]

This solves the problem, I can now press the 'settings' button without crashing X. I just wonder if this test can be fixed in next version or I would have to repeat the same steps.

Thanks a lot.

Daniel

Replying to frank:

The only reason I can imagine is the VBoxTestOGL application which tests if there is 3D support available on this host or not.

Could you do the following:

1. Check where VBoxTestOGL is installed. On Fedora and CentOS, do

   rpm -ql !VirtualBox-4.2 | grep VBoxTestOGL
   

2. Rename this file to VBoxTestOGL.orig (as root).
3. Create a link VBoxTestOGL => /bin/false. For example, if VBoxTestOGL resides in /usr/lib/virtualbox then do

   cd /usr/lib/virtualbox
   mv VBoxTestOGL VBoxTestOGL.orig
   ln -s /bin/false VBoxTestOGL
   

Then try if you can reproduce the crash.

[Frank Mehnert]

I doubt the test can be fixed. This is rather a bug of your X server.

[twshield]

I had exactly the same symptoms on my dual seat nvidia setup and I traced it to libglx.so needing to point at the nvidia version:

in /usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions I now have

libglx.so -> ../nvidia-304.64/libglx.so

libglx.so.orig

and now settings comes up and I can run my virtual machine.

This problem appeared after an upgrade of both xorg and nvidia packages and may have to do with the order the packages were installed, see:

​http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/hardware/479968-xorg-update-causes-crash-nvidia-settings-when-clicking-opengl-glx-information.html

I'm running Fedora 16 btw.

[danielsender]

This fixed the problem, thanks! Incidentally, I also couldn't run Chrome, issue that I suspected was related to the same problem as with VM. I reported the problem on the Centos Forum but I got no response. I can now run Chrome.

Regards,

Daniel

[Frank Mehnert]

Thanks guys for the information!