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Installed 17.10 about a month ago, havn't had any issues until today after my windows machine decided to restart itself automatically. Upon logging back into Virtual box and Ubuntu I get this error. Has me puzzled. I'm a noob, so I thought it was operator error, but it may not be. Any resources or ideas are appreciated!

My host is windows, using virtual box for Ubuntu 17.10

Shawn C McKibben
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  • Sorry, yeah, my host computer is windows, and Ubuntu is loaded through virtual box. – Shawn C McKibben Nov 20 '17 at 20:42
  • Does the login come to completion? I mean, are you able to start a terminal and run systemd-analyze critical-chain? –  Nov 20 '17 at 22:13
  • no, it does it during the start up – Shawn C McKibben Nov 20 '17 at 23:00
  • If the start job indeed never finishes, then I reckon your only help would be a rollback of a snapshot of a working state of your VM. If you don't have a snapshot then I think your VM is a goner. To at least retrieve your files, build a second VM and add the disk of the first to it. –  Nov 20 '17 at 23:20
  • Thank you, I was afraid you were going to say that. I thought I had saved it, but apparently not. I built up a fresh machine this afternoon just in case. sigh. – Shawn C McKibben Nov 20 '17 at 23:30
  • Sorry you had to find out the hard way why the snapshot option is so highlighted in the docs of all VM software vendors. –  Nov 20 '17 at 23:36
  • For posterity, once it locks up, I hit alt-f2, and able to login that way command line. So it's there, I just can't see the desktop. – Shawn C McKibben Nov 21 '17 at 02:58
  • Ah ok. So all is not lost then. You have a choice to make now: 1) You could try and find out what part of the desktop is damaged (time consuming). 2) Remove/re-install the desktop; hoping that repairs it. 3) install and switch to another desktop, f.e. xfce4. As you have already built a fresh VM, I can imagine you don't bother and concentrate on regularly making snapshots ;-) –  Nov 21 '17 at 08:53

1 Answers1

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This can be caused from a broken version of Guest Additions. From https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads :

Important: The Guest Additions which come with VirtualBox 5.2.6 and 5.1.32 do not work properly on Linux guests with 3D enabled. Here are updated versions for 5.2.6 and 5.1.32.

The easiest way to fix the issue seems to be:

  1. Power down the VM
  2. Disable 3D Acceleration in VirtualBox Disaply Settings
  3. Boot the system and install the updated Guest Additions
  4. Power down the VM
  5. Re-enable 3D Acceleration in VirtualBox Disaply Settings
  6. Power up the VM system, which now boots correctly
Brad Werth
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