VirtualBox: black screen (with movable pointer) after login
Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2021 8:18 am
Host: VirtualBox 6.1.22, FreeBSD 14.0-CURRENT.
Yesterday with what I assume was 13.0-STABLE 1300500, I signed in without difficulty and began the Update Station routine. During installation, I closed the virtual machine and saved its state.
This morning when I started the virtual machine I noticed a start of the operating system, which half-surprised me because I had no recollection of completing the installation. (Maybe I did complete it, in a previous VirtualBox session, and forgot.) An attempt to login (as grahamperrin) produced nothing more than a movable pointer on a black screen. I noted 13.0-STABLE 1300504 but did not tell the version of guest additions.
I activated then booted the one and only backup boot environment,
backup-2021-06-12-06-33
I had the same problem with an attempt to login as grahamperrin. First guess: a transient issue involving something in my home directory, and/or the mismatch between 6.1.22 on the host and 6.1.20 in the guest. Second guess: the symptom (black screen + movable pointer) is comparable to some transient problems recently observed with FreeBSD 13.0-RELEASE-p2 in VirtualBox – https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/80860/ – although honestly, this guess is stretching things (the topic there is inconclusive, I should not jump to conclusions here or there).
Without restarting the system, from ttyv1 I ran startx as root and got a working desktop environment. I created, activated then booted a new environment:
1300504
If I recall correctly: at this point (with the environment at 1300500, not yet updated to 1300504), boot in safe mode failed – there were two or more unexpected restarts of the OS (kernel panics, presumably). If I want to reproduce and diagnose this, later, I can use the outdated non-default Default boot environment. For now, let's assume that kernel panics were symptomatic of FreeBSD bug 254412 – emulators/virtualbox-ose-additions - Boot time crash - Sleeping thread owns a non-sleepable lock. Afterthought: the first boot, alone, would have been safe mode; subsequent (unexpected) boots would have been normal mode.
I interrupted the boot loop, started in normal mode, login as grahamperrin succeeded ☑
After waiting a few minutes with no automated hint of available updates, I manually opened Software Station, fetches began.
I clicked the update alert, not realising that a second instance of Software Station would open. I closed the second instance, leaving the first instance processing candidates.
Installation of updates is proceeding, I'll follow up after completion.
Yesterday with what I assume was 13.0-STABLE 1300500, I signed in without difficulty and began the Update Station routine. During installation, I closed the virtual machine and saved its state.
This morning when I started the virtual machine I noticed a start of the operating system, which half-surprised me because I had no recollection of completing the installation. (Maybe I did complete it, in a previous VirtualBox session, and forgot.) An attempt to login (as grahamperrin) produced nothing more than a movable pointer on a black screen. I noted 13.0-STABLE 1300504 but did not tell the version of guest additions.
I activated then booted the one and only backup boot environment,
backup-2021-06-12-06-33
I had the same problem with an attempt to login as grahamperrin. First guess: a transient issue involving something in my home directory, and/or the mismatch between 6.1.22 on the host and 6.1.20 in the guest. Second guess: the symptom (black screen + movable pointer) is comparable to some transient problems recently observed with FreeBSD 13.0-RELEASE-p2 in VirtualBox – https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/80860/ – although honestly, this guess is stretching things (the topic there is inconclusive, I should not jump to conclusions here or there).
Without restarting the system, from ttyv1 I ran startx as root and got a working desktop environment. I created, activated then booted a new environment:
1300504
If I recall correctly: at this point (with the environment at 1300500, not yet updated to 1300504), boot in safe mode failed – there were two or more unexpected restarts of the OS (kernel panics, presumably). If I want to reproduce and diagnose this, later, I can use the outdated non-default Default boot environment. For now, let's assume that kernel panics were symptomatic of FreeBSD bug 254412 – emulators/virtualbox-ose-additions - Boot time crash - Sleeping thread owns a non-sleepable lock. Afterthought: the first boot, alone, would have been safe mode; subsequent (unexpected) boots would have been normal mode.
I interrupted the boot loop, started in normal mode, login as grahamperrin succeeded ☑
After waiting a few minutes with no automated hint of available updates, I manually opened Software Station, fetches began.
I clicked the update alert, not realising that a second instance of Software Station would open. I closed the second instance, leaving the first instance processing candidates.
Installation of updates is proceeding, I'll follow up after completion.