Problems installing Ubuntu 18.04 / 20.04 on VirtualBox 6.1 / 6.2

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timmmay

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#272020 5-Jun-2020 19:08

I'm having a heck of a problem installing Ubuntu 18 / 20 on Virtualbox 6.1 / 6.2. I've installed Ubuntu plenty of times with no problems in the past, but I've tried about ten times across two computers in the past few hours with nothing but problems. I've validated the SHA256 so I know the image is fine. I'm trying on a brand new surface laptop 2 and on my old workhorse the i7 2060K.

Mostly the installation black screens before the proper install starts. Sometimes I get part or all of the way through the install. Sometimes the install finishes but when I run the OS I get messages like "fsck required". This time I got the message below.

I've tried 1GB - 8GB of RAM. I've tried different video RAM amounts. I've tried 1 - 4 CPUs. I've tried default and no virtualisation acceleration. I get different results but I haven't noticed any correlation yet.

Any ideas at all? Not really sure where to go from here other than back to VirtualBox 5.x, which has worked fine in the past.

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#2499253 5-Jun-2020 19:13

TBH My experience with virtual box was never really that flash hot.

I ran it natively, Ran it with vagrant and sometimes it just didnt quite work well. Doing the exact thing you described with it wanting to do virual disk checks etc.

Dont use any thin provisioning.... that just makes it worse. Use a fixed disk size.

If possible just run it on a R Pi. Or if you dont need a gui use a docker container.

timmmay

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#2499272 5-Jun-2020 20:10

I've always had good luck with it in the past, no problems at all. I am using variable disk sizes.

I need it on my work laptop, and I do find a GUI helpful at times for what I do with them, so container not so useful.

I've just found a tip to turn Windows features "Hyper-V" and "Virtual Machine Features" off, even though it's meant to work with VirtualBox 6. One was enabled on each machine. I'll give that a shot now.

nztim

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#2499276 5-Jun-2020 20:20

Hyper-V is free under Windows10, use that :)

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michaelmurfy

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#2499278 5-Jun-2020 20:30

Are you using the Linux for Windows subsystem?

I'm having a problem with Virtualbox + VMWare as I am using the Linux for Windows subsystem (version 2) which uses Hyper-V for parts of it behind the scenes, looking online it appears this basically causes virtualization conflicts. I've never had the best of luck with Virtualbox as a whole but had this exact problem with VMWare on my PC.

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timmmay

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#2499281 5-Jun-2020 20:36

I did enable Windows Subsystem for Linux on the laptop today, but not on the PC. The laptop is working with Ubuntu 20 now I turned Hyper-V and "Virtual Machine Features" off, with WSL enabled. All three are off on the desktop and it's not working. I get a black screen instead of the Ubuntu install window.

Ubuntu 16 that I created with my old PC was working fine until I broke it during an upgrade to Ubuntu 20 today. I figured I'd just install a new one in a few minutes. Hours later...

I don't much care which virtualisation product I use, I've just always used Virtualbox. Can I run Ubuntu within Hyper-V in much the same way as virtualbox @nztim?

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#2499291 5-Jun-2020 21:22

I use ubuntu on hyper-v. More recently I have been trying out WSL (2.0) with the Ubuntu shell to see how it works.

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timmmay

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#2499292 5-Jun-2020 21:25

I have Ubuntu 20 installing on Hyper-V on my PC now, that worked fine. I might try it on the laptop as well, instead of VirtualBox.

I also had WSL2 running, but prefer an actual VM for some things. WSL is fairly immature, after you use it I found I had to reboot as it kept using a lot of RAM.

michaelmurfy

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#2499294 5-Jun-2020 21:40

The black screen issue sounds like a conflict likely because Hyper-V is enabled or running. I have the same thing currently.

nztim

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#2499295 5-Jun-2020 21:41

timmmay:

Can I run Ubuntu within Hyper-V in much the same way as virtualbox @nztim?

Trying it now

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nztim

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#2499296 5-Jun-2020 21:42

michaelmurfy:

The black screen issue sounds like a conflict likely because Hyper-V is enabled or running. I have the same thing currently.

I have had the black screen with Ubuntu on virtual box (with no other Hypervisor Running)

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michaelmurfy

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#2499297 5-Jun-2020 21:43

nztim:

I have had the black screen with Ubuntu on virtual box (with no other Hypervisor Running)

Interesting - could it be perhaps GPU acceleration? I'll attempt to install it within Hyper-V at a later stage but WSL works incredibly well for my needs now anyway.

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timmmay

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#2499300 5-Jun-2020 22:01

Hyper-V is installing Ubuntu fine. It's incredibly slow - it took about 15 minutes to install on my laptop SSD, I decided to install on a spinning disk on my PC and it's got to have taken an hour with the disks chugging along.

I like that with a VM I can copy / move the VM to other PCs. I don't think I can do that with WSL.

nztim

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#2499301 5-Jun-2020 22:12

@timmmay @michaelmurfy Installed 20.04 straight away on Hyper-V on my laptop (HP EliteBook G2)

Interestingly it wouldn't boot the ISO as a Generation2 Virtual Machine (might need to tweak secure boot)

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timmmay

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#2499304 5-Jun-2020 22:31

Yeah I had to use Gen1 as well. It's working fine. I think I'll get rid of Virtualbox and just use Hyper-V for this now. Thanks for the suggestion, really helpful @nztim!

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#2499380 6-Jun-2020 08:45

nztim:

Interestingly it wouldn't boot the ISO as a Generation2 Virtual Machine (might need to tweak secure boot)

You can use Gen 2 (and probably should). See the note about secure boot here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/virtualization/hyper-v/plan/should-i-create-a-generation-1-or-2-virtual-machine-in-hyper-v Looking at my VM I've disabled secure boot (probably cause I didnt realise changing it as in the docs would work 😊)

You will also want to get xrdp going on your VMs. This'll make the experience of using the Linux desktop MUCH better. E.g. you can copy paste from your Windows into your Linux desktop. There's some scripts for that here: https://github.com/microsoft/linux-vm-tools I followed a set of instructions online somewhere (cant find them now of course but similar to this https://www.phillipsj.net/posts/hyper-v-enhanced-session-with-popos/).

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