I thought I had done something very stupid today, when updating the Linux Mint laptop that runs my instance of Home Assistant OS through Virtualbox.
I ran the regular updates to the host OS and apps, then restarted, and the snapshot that I made before restarting would not load, but gave a ‘Guru Meditation’ fatal error.
After some trials and errors I found that it was actually not a case of a corrupted VM, since I could actually start it on a different machine after making a clone.
It’s something in the latest Linux Kernels that bugs the 6.50 version of VirtualBox.That version is the OS supported one under Linux Mint. I read a few similar reports in the VirtualBox user forums, and installing the latest VirtualBox 7 should fix it.
It turns out that you need to install that through the CLI, the .deb that you download from VirtualBox is not compatible, at least not for me. Here’s a very good step by step guide for that: VirtualBox 7 on Linux Mint 21: A Complete Installation Guide
After installing VirtualBox 7.0.20, the VM started up normally and all is peachy again.
I know this is not strictly Home Assistant related but hopefully it saves someone from a stressfull moment and a lot of work.
I just had a very similar problem. Don’t know why it occurred in the first place, but suddenly virtualbox couldn’t start my Home Assistant container anymore.
I was still on Ubuntu 20.04 and had to upgrade to 22.04 to be able to install VirtualBox 7.x. Maybe there is an easier way, too, but either or everything is working again
Hi iam running VirtualBox 7.0.20 and Ha 24.5.5 tay to uppgrade to 24.7.4 and it frizing
i have to shot down Vrb hard i dont know if its Wrb or if you kant uppgrade to from 5 to 7 just jump 6 hapy to get som feedback 1 post in the forum Thanks /J
Hi mrjatko,
DId you manage to find and resolve your problem? If not, I think it would be better to start a separate thread because your problem seems to be unrelated to the issue brought up in this thread.
I know big updates can sometimes take so long it seems like the machine is frozen (20+minutes is not unheard of), but other than that I can’t help you based on the information you’ve provided.
Thanks to replay Allard now i have digg alitebit deper it looks like in restart in VBox it stop at to tacke down the docker conteiner so it most be a case to VirutalBox forum i return if i find a fix /J
This saved my bacon! I am running Mint 21.2 which I last updated in December of 2023. I updated today, NOT upgraded, and my home assistant virtual box would not open in virtualbox 6.1. I upgraded to 7.0 using the procedure in the link you provided. The only catch I ran into is that the sudo command does’t work quite right for me. I had to elevate to root in the terminal window, and then remove the “sudo” from the commands provided in the link. NOTE: do this by issuing > sudo -i. I did not install the extension pack. I do get a warning that USB devices cannot be enumerated, possibly this requires the extension pack. Thank you for taking the time to write this up for us! – Jim
I’m glad I could be of help! The extension pack is needed for USB passthrough AFAIK, without it I would not be able to use my Sonoff Zigbee controller.
I did notice something today about the V7 Virtualbox. I wanted to shut down my VM by the ‘ACPI shutdown’ command, which I usually do before restarting the host system, but this didn’t work, all of Virtualbox just became irresponsive. So maybe there is a good reason for Mint to not have upgraded to V7. In that case I sure hope they fix the problem with V6.
In my case, there are a few reasons
1 Running HAOS virtually and a browser both on the same secondhand flipscreen laptop allows me to have a large touchscreen display in the living room to run the UI without the need to invest in two separate pieces of hardware
2 Running a VM means I can make snapshots of my complete system that I can fire up almost instantly on a different computer in case of some critical failure
3 I’ve tried to achieve same thing using Ha supervised but I found it more cumbersome to install and maintain
4 I want to run some addons and didn’t want to invest in learning Docker, so HAOS seemed the logical choice, besides it seemingly being the best supported install method.
5 (in case I misunderstood the question) I don’t really like the direction Windows has taken in the recent years, don’t have enough experience or hardware for MacOS, and never really used any of the other OS that might be able to run a VM.
6 There are probably other methods that can achieve what I want but this one works for me, there hasn’t been any problem except for the glitch that this thread is about, so I see no reason to change.
Just FYI, you could achieve all the same benefits by running Proxmox as the base, with one VM for HAOS and another for Mint (or whatever you like). This might be a smidge cleaner and places HAOS closer to the metal. But to your point 6, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it!
Yes, that would no doubt be possible. But tbh I don’t really see a real world disadvantage from being further from the metal. HAOS seems to be pretty indifferent to it all, which speaks for the quality of the product. I understand proxmox is the preferred solution if resources are limited, but the VM never comes close to fully using the resources I allocated to it and I still have some room to spare if I needed to allocate more.
One nice thing about Virtualbox is that I can even use a Windows host (eg my work laptop) to serve as emergency backup hardware.
Anyway, if I am going to make any drastic changes to the setup I will probably get dedicated hardware for the HAOS and keep the Linux laptop as the UI operator, instead of changing the virtualization engine.
