What's up with 4.3.8?

[Walter Hurry]

I'm dual booting FreeBSD 9.2 and Fedora 20.

In both cases 4.3.8 renders the guest system unbootable, due to kernel errors.
In both cases reverting to 4.3.6 on the host has resolved the issue.

Guest OSs are FreeBSD 10 and Fedora 20 respectively. Both hosts and both guests are 64 bit.

[Fernando Cassia]

Post by Walter Hurry
In both cases 4.3.8 renders the guest system unbootable, due to kernel errors.
In both cases reverting to 4.3.6 on the host has resolved the issue.

Thanks for the heads up. I still haven't updated so I welcome your feedback.
Let's see if other list members or devs have any comment on the matter.

FC

[John A. Wallace]

Yes, I had a hard time with it too, not going nearly so smoothly as with
previous updates in my experience. I was forced to reinstall Win 8 after
trying to apply the guest additions, which stopped halfway through and left
it with a black screen. The screen never recovered, and I was forced to
resort to a snapshot and work my way back to the present state. Generally
speaking, this update seemed problematic for Windows OS in particular.





From: Fernando Cassia [mailto:fcassia-***@public.gmane.org]
Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2014 4:22 PM
To: Community mailing list of VirtualBox users
Subject: Re: [VBox-users] What's up with 4.3.8?





On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 7:09 PM, Walter Hurry <walterhurry-***@public.gmane.org> wrote:

In both cases 4.3.8 renders the guest system unbootable, due to kernel
errors.
In both cases reverting to 4.3.6 on the host has resolved the issue.


Thanks for the heads up. I still haven't updated so I welcome your feedback.
Let's see if other list members or devs have any comment on the matter.

FC

[Frank Mehnert]

Walter,

Post by Walter Hurry
I'm dual booting FreeBSD 9.2 and Fedora 20.
In both cases 4.3.8 renders the guest system unbootable, due to kernel
errors. In both cases reverting to 4.3.6 on the host has resolved the
issue.
Guest OSs are FreeBSD 10 and Fedora 20 respectively. Both hosts and both guests are 64 bit.

without having more information it's hard to tell why your VMs don't boot
anymore. At least a VBox.log file is required. The preferred way to report
such issues is the public bugtracker.

4.3.8 in general is a stable release but due to changes in certain aspects
of machine status registers there might be problems with certain host CPUs.
But again, without more information we can't help.

Kind regards,

Frank
--
Dr.-Ing. Frank Mehnert | Software Development Director, VirtualBox
ORACLE Deutschland B.V. & Co. KG | Werkstr. 24 | 71384 Weinstadt, Germany

Hauptverwaltung: Riesstr. 25, D-80992 München
Registergericht: Amtsgericht München, HRA 95603
Geschäftsführer: Jürgen Kunz

Komplementärin: ORACLE Deutschland Verwaltung B.V.
Hertogswetering 163/167, 3543 AS Utrecht, Niederlande
Handelsregister der Handelskammer Midden-Niederlande, Nr. 30143697
Geschäftsführer: Alexander van der Ven, Astrid Kepper, Val Maher

[james]

Post by Frank Mehnert
4.3.8 in general is a stable release but due to changes in certain aspects
of machine status registers there might be problems with certain host CPUs.

I have a rather ancient quad Phenom 9650 system, 8GB RAM, Win8.1 64bit.

I used to run VMs on it quite happily - now its not so happy.
Virtualisation is enabled in BIOS but it doesn't think so.

Might be a Win8.1 thing - its a while since I ran VMs on this system.

It probably IS time I upgraded. ;-)

[John A. Wallace]

Post by Frank Mehnert
4.3.8 in general is a stable release but due to changes in certain
aspects of machine status registers there might be problems with
certain host CPUs.
But again, without more information we can't help.

Is there something specific you can point to for us to see which "certain
host CPUs" you have in mind? I would like to understand this problem better,
but without more information it is hard to see whether I can possibly
troubleshoot this issue or whether mine might be one of those included among
the group of certain host CPUs. If it is incompatible, that is one thing;
but if it is not, then, well, that would be something else. Thanks.

[Frank Mehnert]

Post by John A. Wallace

Post by Frank Mehnert
4.3.8 in general is a stable release but due to changes in certain
aspects of machine status registers there might be problems with
certain host CPUs.
But again, without more information we can't help.

Is there something specific you can point to for us to see which "certain
host CPUs" you have in mind? I would like to understand this problem
better, but without more information it is hard to see whether I can
possibly troubleshoot this issue or whether mine might be one of those
included among the group of certain host CPUs. If it is incompatible, that
is one thing; but if it is not, then, well, that would be something else.

In VirtualBox 4.3.8 the way how machine status registers are emulated was
changed. VirtualBox up to version 4.3.6 used sensible default values for
most MSRs. These values were determined by trial and error to make most
guests happy. However, the set of MSRs depends on the CPU microarchitecture.
For instance, Intel Pention M is very different from Intel Core i7.
Certain guests or guest drivers expect different MSR behavior for different
CPUs. To fulfil this expectation, the behavior was changed in 4.3.8. This
change was actually planned for 4.3.0 but it wasn't ready in time. You
get a first impression if you look at this directory:

https://www.virtualbox.org/browser/vbox/trunk/src/VBox/VMM/VMMR3/cpus

For most CPUs, the behavior shouldn't be much different but for CPUs
which differ too much from all examples in this directory, the emulation
is probably not precise enough. After 4.3.8 we added support for Intel
SandyBridge as well as support for more recent AMD Athlon 64 X2 CPUs
which should fix some problems users saw on these CPUs.

We cannot provide a list of supported CPUs. Often the difference between
the CPU microarchitectures is that small that one can use the complete
emulation of the previous architecture. We have a number of different
CPU architectures available and did extensive tests but we surely cannot
catch all problems. Therefore it is important that users open tickets for
such 4.3.8 regressions (actually it's very important to differ between
4.3.8 regressions and bugs users already saw with 4.3.6!) on our public
bugtracker so we can investigate and provide 4.3.9 test builds so users
can check if their problem is now fixed or not. For instance such reports:

https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/12734
https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/12736
https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/12744

And it is important for us to get the feedback if such problem is fixed!

But as I said in a previews mail, the normal user should not experience
any different behavior between 4.3.6 and 4.3.8. In general, the 4.3.8
release is quite stable.

Kind regards,

Frank
--
Dr.-Ing. Frank Mehnert | Software Development Director, VirtualBox
ORACLE Deutschland B.V. & Co. KG | Werkstr. 24 | 71384 Weinstadt, Germany

Hauptverwaltung: Riesstr. 25, D-80992 München
Registergericht: Amtsgericht München, HRA 95603
Geschäftsführer: Jürgen Kunz

Komplementärin: ORACLE Deutschland Verwaltung B.V.
Hertogswetering 163/167, 3543 AS Utrecht, Niederlande
Handelsregister der Handelskammer Midden-Niederlande, Nr. 30143697
Geschäftsführer: Alexander van der Ven, Astrid Kepper, Val Maher

[Maurice]

On my Toshiba laptop I have had V4.1.16 running happily on
Mageia-3 for some time.

I have now also installed Mageia-4 for testing, and installed its V'box
V4.3.6 - complete with Guest Additions and extensions.

All works well *except* that I cannot get it to fill the screen
vertically (using View/Autosize Guest Display & Adjust Window).
(Using a clone of the .VirtualBox directory from Mageia-3.)

Did something in this area get changed between 4.1.16 & 4.3.6?

[Maurice]

I cannot get it to fill the screen vertically

See screen snapshot:

Loading Image...

[Maurice]

Post by Maurice

I cannot get it to fill the screen vertically

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10969499/vbox-snapshot.png

Can anyone help, please?
What changed in this area between V4.1.16 and V4.3.6?
(Linux version, on 32-bit Mageia-4.)

Many thanks!

[Eric S. Johansson]

Can anyone help, please? What changed in this area between V4.1.16 and
V4.3.6? (Linux version, on 32-bit Mageia-4.) Many thanks!

The only time I've ever had this problem is when the guest side code
didn't update properly. try updating it again, rebooting and verifying
that you have the right version installed.

[Maurice]

Post by Eric S. Johansson
The only time I've ever had this problem is when the guest side
code didn't update properly.

Guest side code?

Do you mean (if I'm running Windows XP) a Windows s/w update?
(Haven't done any of that...)

Post by Eric S. Johansson
verifying that you have the right version installed.

Erm, right version of what, Eric?

Regards,

[zGreenfelder]

Post by Maurice

Post by Eric S. Johansson
The only time I've ever had this problem is when the guest side
code didn't update properly.

Guest side code?
Do you mean (if I'm running Windows XP) a Windows s/w update?
(Haven't done any of that...)

Post by Eric S. Johansson
verifying that you have the right version installed.

Erm, right version of what, Eric?
Regards,
--
/\/\aurice

I suspect he means the guest side additions. e.g. the virtual box
tools you install from the iso that usually lives in
/usr/share/virtualbox/VBoxGuestAdditions.iso on a linux host.

[Maurice]

Post by zGreenfelder
the virtual box
tools you install from the iso that usually lives in
/usr/share/virtualbox/VBoxGuestAdditions.iso on a linux host.

Not on Mageia-4
(or here on Mageia-3, where VBox works perfectly!).

On V4.3.6 on Mageia-4 they were installed by the Mageia S/w
installer.

Is there another way of checking that they are installed?

[j***@public.gmane.org]

 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: "zGreenfelder" [zgreenfelder-***@public.gmane.org]
Date: 03/13/2014 11:15 AM
To: "Community mailing list of VirtualBox users" <vbox-users-***@lists.sourceforge.net>
Subject: Re: [VBox-users] V 4.3.6 not filling laptop 1024x768 screen.

Note: Original message sent as attachment
 
I would agree with ... installing the correct "guestadditions" version to your Vbox guest OS.
-the vbox version and the vboxguestadditions versions must match-
-you can uninstall the guestadditions if there are errors, and reinstall-
 
The guest additions, after you run/install it (the guestadditions-iso), ...have ... built in ... system corrections for the guestOS that you have installed.
 
The "view" used to "fill the screen" is - full screen.
This setting (if/after you have the guestadditions installed) auto-magically fills the host screen,... with the guestOS.
My "host screen" screen is 13668x768, (when swiching to full-screen-view) my vbox guestOS uses this resolution.
 
best of luck,
Sammie
 

[Maurice]

Post by j***@public.gmane.org
The guest additions, after you run/install it (the
guestadditions-iso), ...have ... built in ... system corrections for
the guestOS that you have installed.

OK - have re-installed the Guest Additions, but as I am away from the
1024x768 monitor I'll have to wait a while to check it out!
Many thanks!

Regards,