Virtualbox can't boot new Whonix VMs (but old ones boot fine)

[Patrick]

@ghj2020

I keep my Whonix boxes up to date though, so I don’t understand why the old ones would work while the ova files newly downloaded from the site wouldn’t.

Because VirtualBox settings changed between releases. Upgrading inside of VM doesn’t upgrade VM settings on the host.

@ghj2020

cat /etc/whonix_version

says it’s version 15

Just the major version. Only will be upgraded when changing release

@ghj2020

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.

Yes, that’s a problem. I can’t 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:

Whonix-Host Operating System Live ISO, Whonix-Host Installer

@Patrick

Is it possible to use systemd seccomp filtering for running applications from command line?

added to wiki just now:

Hosts using a non-Debian OS: [image]

Install VirtualBox as per the normal mechanism for your Linux distribution. Whonix ™ 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 ™ will probably not work.

You might want to release-upgrade to Ubuntu focal ( 20.04LTS ) which provides VirtualBox version 6.16 .