blinking underscore

Blackscreen with blinking underscore, Whonix workstation on Virtualbox with Debian host

Also have this problem, can’t find solution, could someone help please?

Started this project last week. Whonix gateway operates just fine. Workstation worked fine just after install. After rebooting it stopped working (as title indicates).

-Vm:
System:
Base memory 4090 MB
processors: 4
-Display
128 MB
GC: VMSVGA
-OS host: Debian 11 (bullseye)
-CPU: SVM Mode enabled

General VirtualBox Troubleshooting Steps
General trouble shoot Walked through all recommendations
Latest stable virtbox Yes
Latest stable debian host Yes
Sudo apt update && upgrade host Yes
Debian bullseye Yes
sudo adduser $(whoami) vboxusers Yes
No other virtualizer Yes
Ram 4000 MB
Hardware (Desktop from 2020, enough resources)
Other vms do work Debian guest works, ubuntu guest works

VirtualBox Generic Bug Reproduction
recommended Linux distribution Debian 11
recommended version of the VirtualBox Latest
Install VirtualBox Guest Additions I tried with and without guest additions

Note:

  • I have not booted with the nomodeset kernel parameter. (because I do not know how to do this in Whonix).
  • I am wondering if the issue here could be related to the nvidia gpu (as that is mentioned a youtube video with similar issues that I have)
  • I am not sure how to share logs, as I want to remain private. I pasted some repetitive lines from the log.
  • I can login into the virtual console but do not know what the use of this would be

LOG:

w=1024 h=768 bpp=0 cbLine=0x0 flags=0x2 origin=0,0
00:00:38.723550 Display::i_handleDisplayResize: uScreenId=0 pvVRAM=00007efe3c000000 w=1024 h=768 bpp=32 cbLine=0x1000 flags=0x1 origin=0,0
00:00:38.727988 GUI: UIMachineLogic: Guest-screen count changed
00:00:39.037493 Display::i_handleDisplayResize: uScreenId=0 pvVRAM=0000000000000000 w=1024 h=768 bpp=0 cbLine=0x0 flags=0x2 origin=0,0
00:00:39.039355 Display::i_handleDisplayResize: uScreenId=0 pvVRAM=00007efe3c000000 w=1024 h=768 bpp=32 cbLine=0x1000 flags=0x1 origin=0,0
00:00:39.039826 GUI: UIMachineLogic: Guest-screen count changed
00:00:39.329031 Display::i_handleDisplayResize: uScreenId=0 pvVRAM=0000000000000000 w=1024 h=768 bpp=0 cbLine=0x0 flags=0x2 origin=0,0

Not immediately helpful to point out but a blinking underscore isn’t the same as a black screen. A black screen is an issue with drawing at all. A graphic card driver / kernel / virtualizer issue.

A blinking underscore is evidence of a functional graphical output.

That might help should you decide to research this issue further.


An easy fix - data loss inside VM - if appropriate (not caring about data loss inside VM):

(Whonix is based on Kicksecure.)

The real debugging and fix could be quite harder


Documentation link functional, fixed just now: grub bootloader Configuration Changes

Likely not.

Shows further that it might not be a graphic card issue.

To investigate further:

Related: