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Ubuntu MATE 16.04.3. Virtualbox 5.0.40 (from the Ubuntu repos).

I have been using Virtualbox for 2 years now. I booted yesterday and it is no longer working.

All text in the GUI is in italics (which I think is trying to tell me something), and when I start any VM the PC instantly freezes. A hard reboot is required.

Any pointers ?enter image description here

Robby1212
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hatterman
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  • Does the problem persist after a reboot? Does you system have any other recent curiosities? – user535733 Feb 20 '18 at 19:31
  • It does persist after a reboot. I have also booted using the previous kernel, same problem. I am not seeing any other curiosities. I havnt used virtualbox in about a week, I wonder if an upgrade has broken it ? – hatterman Feb 20 '18 at 19:38
  • Maybe just uninstall and reinstall it. Might be worth a try. – davidbaumann Feb 20 '18 at 19:40
  • Already tried. And reinstalled virtualbox-dkms also. Still no joy. – hatterman Feb 20 '18 at 19:40
  • How do you specifically upgrade linux-headers ? The headers for the current kernel are already installed. happy to do it if you can tell me how. – hatterman Feb 20 '18 at 21:06
  • Ahh, OK. Understood. Well, they are already installed. I am currently running 4.13.0-32 (I haven't chosen this, it is whatever kernel Ubuntu MATE has chosen to install). Following your comment on headers I installed linux-image-generic package, which installed kernel 4.4.0-112. Virtualbox works correctly with this kernel, but not with the default 4.13.0-32 kernel (although it did up until this recent issue). Note : Virtualbox GUI text is still italic, which is strange ! – hatterman Feb 21 '18 at 09:40

1 Answers1

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I did some more research and it seems this is a known bug.

Launchpad bug report

Another ask Ubuntu post talks about this very issue and offers a workaround of booting into the LTS 4.4 kernel for now, which is also what I discovered with a little trial and error.

Ask Ubuntu related post

So, until the bug is fixed it seems the recomended work around is to boot into the 4.4 LTS kernel if you want to run Virtualbox.

As the HWE kernel has been installed as default in my Ubuntu MATE installation, I had to install the LTS 4.4 (GA) kernel manually.

sudo apt install linux-image-generic linux-headers-generic

At the grub boot prompt, select "Advanced Options" for this Ubuntu installation (I dual boot and have multiple installations) and select the 4.4 kernel.

(The italic text in the Virtualbox GUI remains a mystery !)

hatterman
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