Hi there. I think this is an issue with my host system and virtualbox, but I ask it here in case anyone has encountered something similar.
I recently bought a Dell Latitude E6430 laptop with 8 and did a minimal Ubuntu 18.04 install onto it (current version 18.04.4). I do everything out of virtual machines, so migrating my data from my old Thinkpad just involved importing a bunch of .ova files.
The VMs created from my old .ova files work fine, as do any clones made of them. However, when I attempt to create any new virtual machines, they are unable to boot. This is true when I use the āNewā function to install a .iso file into a VM (Linux Lite) and when I try to import a .ova (Whonix).
It doesnāt throw up any error messages I can see, but I admit Iām not very good at debugging.
For the new linux lite install, I started with the Virtualbox settings Iāve always used for it, then tried fiddling around a bunch, but nothing works. My old Linux Lite VMs and their clones continue to work fine with those settings. For the Whonix .ova, I use it with out-of-the-box settings, and they canāt boot, while Iām doing the same with my old VMs and their clones and they can. I can get to the boot option screen and try booting into recovery mode, but it still crashes.
Iāve been poking around for solutions to this off and on for a few weeks before bugging you all about it. Any suggestions are appreciated.
Host system: Ubuntu 18.04.4 on Dell Latitude E6430 with 7.7gb ram Virtualbox: 5.2.34_Ubuntu (just installing through the basic repos, Iād rather keep things simple in my host and not add other repositories)
So the problem then as far as Whonix is concerned is that the current version of Whonix no longer works with the version of Virtualbox distributed in the base Ubuntu repos. Iāll get the current version of VB and report back.
In my āoldā machines that still work,
cat /etc/whonix_version
says itās version 15, so I guess that means this VirtualBox version stopped being supported very recently? I keep my Whonix boxes up to date though, so I donāt understand why the old ones would work while the ova files newly downloaded from the site wouldnāt.
ghj2020,
I can confirm that recent Whonix machines work fine in Virtualbox 6.1.6. Itās always a good idea to make sure that the guest additions in the machines, are a match (or very close) to the Virtualbox version running on your host otherwise you will have issues.
Because VirtualBox settings changed between releases. Upgrading inside of VM doesnāt upgrade VM settings on the host.
Just the major version. Only will be upgraded when changing release
Yes, thatās a problem. I canāt really support multiple host operating systems and VirtualBox versions at the same time with currently available resources.
Virtualizer installation is a major stumbling point for many users. Hence, future development direction for Whonix is Whonix-Host, which comes with a pre-installed and pre-configured virtualizer (KVM) by default. See:
added to wiki just now:
Hosts using a non-Debian OS: [image]
Install VirtualBox as per the normal mechanism for your Linux distribution. Whonix ā¢ has has been tested with, expects VirtualBox version 6.16 or higher.
For example VirtualBox version 5.2.18 has been reported to not be compatible.
Ubuntu hosts:
Ubuntu bionic ( 18.04LTS ) APT repository ships only VirtualBox version 5.2.18 and Whonix ā¢ will probably not work.
You might want to release-upgrade to Ubuntu focal ( 20.04LTS ) which provides VirtualBox version 6.16 .
