Ubuntu 16.04 - VirtualBox 5.0 - Host crashes

Without performing any update, suddenly today when I tried to power on a VM in VirtualBox, the host machine (running Ubuntu 16.04) freezed.

• I tried couple of times and the problem keep repeating.

• I run memtest: all good

• Tried to create a new VM just in case: same issue.

• Downgraded the VirtualBox installation: didn't help at all.
• Disabled network, shared folders etc: Nothing.

On the same machine I've also got Windows 10 in dual boot. I've got couple of VMs there in VBox and VMWare. Just to minimize the probability of any HW issue, I started the VMs there and they work just fine.

Any idea?

The only way to recover the host was to hard-reset.

ps: The freeze happens as soon as I click the "Start" button.

Host details:

• VirtualBox: Version 5.0.40_Ubuntu

• Kernel: 4.13.0-26-generic

• Guest: irrelevant (windows 10, OpenSuse, CentOS)

• The log file of VirtualBox is empty.

Solution 1:

Figured it out after following:

https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2382314

(Had to upgrade VBox to 5.2 and all worked ok)

In case you need it, had also to follow : VirtualBox - RTR3InitEx failed with rc=-1912 (rc=-1912) in order to completely uninstall all the previous installations

There was a silent security update that caused old VirtualBox installations (older than 5.2) to hang the entire host.

Solution 2:

I really appreciate Sanosay, and Bertrand Lo question and answers here. I followed them and fixed this issue on my situation, let me summarize what I've done for this issue step by step completely here for your convenience:

1. sudo apt autoremove virtualbox

2. Reboot.

3. Add deb https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian xenial contrib into Ubuntu 16.04's software source list.

   (by start "Software & Updates, and choose the "Other Software" tab, and click "Add" button, then paste the deb https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian xenial contrib in the APT line)

4. sudo apt update && sudo apt install virtualbox-5.2

   Be cautious! It's virtualbox-5.2 instead of virtualbox.

5. after installation, reboot

6. run virtualbox, and you'll find that your virtualbox version is 5.2 now, and it'll not cause whole host ubuntu16.04 crash when run one guest OS.

The original version virtualbox in ubuntu16.04 could not work correctly with Ubuntu16.04 latest patch, even Canonical claims 16.04 is their LTS (Long Term Support) version, at least it couldn't support the virtualbox 5.0 now.