Virtualbox freezes

Hello,
Since some time I can’t use Virtualbox anymore. I created several guest machines but they all at a given moment freeze.
I have used Virtualbox on this hardware before and it worked well, the version I have now doesn’t. Sometimes I manage to install the guest OS but it freezes later, now I working with Manjaro KDE and it won’t even let me start the installation process.

I use Tumbleweed and it is fully updated. I somehow get a feeling I either miss a piece of software, or I have something installed too much. When I look in Yast software management I see I have installed 4 packages:


Is this correct? Can somebody confirm this, or do I need less or more packages?
Do I maybe need a package which does not carry Virtualbox in its name?

Some hardware info:

$ inxi -F
System:
  Host: localhost.localdomain Kernel: 6.2.6-1-default arch: x86_64 bits: 64
    Desktop: KDE Plasma v: 5.27.2 Distro: openSUSE Tumbleweed 20230316
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: MEDION product: E15302 v: N/A
    serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: MEDION model: NS15AP serial: <superuser required>
    UEFI: American Megatrends v: AP618_MED_V0.13.2_M00P1T0G0 date: 11/18/2020
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT0 charge: 27.0 Wh (60.0%) condition: 45.0/45.0 Wh (100.0%)
CPU:
  Info: quad core model: AMD Ryzen 5 3500U with Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx
    bits: 64 type: MT MCP cache: L2: 2 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 1445 min/max: 1400/2100 cores: 1: 1231 2: 1400 3: 1231
    4: 1400 5: 1400 6: 1400 7: 1400 8: 2100
Graphics:
  Device-1: AMD Picasso/Raven 2 [Radeon Vega Series / Radeon Mobile Series]
    driver: amdgpu v: kernel
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 21.1.7 with: Xwayland v: 22.1.8 driver: X:
    loaded: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa dri: radeonsi gpu: amdgpu
    resolution: 1: 1920x1080~60Hz 2: 1920x1080~60Hz
  API: OpenGL v: 4.6 Mesa 23.0.0 renderer: AMD Radeon Vega 8 Graphics
    (raven LLVM 15.0.7 DRM 3.49 6.2.6-1-default)
Audio:
  Device-1: AMD Raven/Raven2/Fenghuang HDMI/DP Audio driver: snd_hda_intel
  Device-2: AMD ACP/ACP3X/ACP6x Audio Coprocessor driver: snd_pci_acp3x
  Device-3: AMD Family 17h/19h HD Audio driver: snd_hda_intel
  Sound API: ALSA v: k6.2.6-1-default running: yes
  Sound Server-1: PipeWire v: 0.3.66 running: yes
Network:
  Device-1: Intel Wireless 3165 driver: iwlwifi
  IF: wlp1s0 state: up mac: 34:cf:f6:40:ff:0b
  IF-ID-1: tun0 state: unknown speed: 10000 Mbps duplex: full mac: N/A
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Intel Bluetooth wireless interface type: USB driver: btusb
  Report: rfkill ID: hci0 state: up address: see --recommends
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 476.94 GiB used: 362.11 GiB (75.9%)
  ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Phison model: S11-512G-SSD-B27 size: 476.94 GiB
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 23.46 GiB used: 13.21 GiB (56.3%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda2
  ID-2: /boot/efi size: 63.8 MiB used: 4.9 MiB (7.7%) fs: vfat
    dev: /dev/sda1
  ID-3: /home size: 435.66 GiB used: 348.23 GiB (79.9%) fs: xfs
    dev: /dev/sda4
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 17 GiB used: 680.8 MiB (3.9%)
    dev: /dev/sda3
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 58.9 C mobo: N/A gpu: amdgpu temp: 58.0 C
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Info:
  Processes: 326 Uptime: 3h 21m Memory: 13.59 GiB used: 3.8 GiB (28.0%)
  Shell: Bash inxi: 3.3.23
[User: jan] @ [Server: localhost] - [Directory: ~]

I read that when I want to use virtualization I should tell that to the BIOS/UEFI, but in there I can’t find anything at all regarding virtualization. Does that mean it is switched on already?

Who can help me with this issue? I would like to have it running again so I can see what other distro’s are doing without disturbing/erasing Tumbleweed.

@JanMussche very likely the version mis-match between your virtualbox kmp and the running kernel. Any reason you need a third party application when kvm/libvirt/qemu is present and functions OTB with any kernel…

Hi Malcom,
I did try to get KVM working but I get a diskfull error. The message doesn’t say which disk that is, when I look now I have plenty of space left on both the BOOT/EFI disk as well as the / and also the /home disk. Sure, I would like to try that way of virtualization but it just doesn’t work on my system now so I reverted back to Virtualbox. Re-installing Tumbleweed with larger disksizes is not something I like to do cause it is all just working great, except for this issue.

@JanMussche Hi, well the storage location for the images is /var/lib/libvirt I have a separate 300GB xfs partition for these files.

Is virtualization enabled in the BIOS?

Here is what I have - you do have to reboot after installing VB and add your user to vboxusers in /etc/group (you have to logoff and back in to have VB see the user in vboxusers. - entry looks like this vboxusers:x:451:myusername )
)

zypper se -si virtualbox
Loading repository data…
Reading installed packages…

S | Name | Type | Version | Arch | Repository
—±-----------------------±--------±-------------------±-------±-----------------------
i+ | virtualbox | package | 7.0.6-5.1 | x86_64 | openSUSE-Tumbleweed-Oss
i+ | virtualbox-kmp-default | package | 7.0.6_k6.2.6_1-5.4 | x86_64 | openSUSE-Tumbleweed-Oss
i+ | virtualbox-qt | package | 7.0.6-5.1 | x86_64 | openSUSE-Tumbleweed-Oss

I have the following VM
fedora twgnome mint suse15 twmate twkde win10 win11

windows 11 does not work with the 7.0.6 guest additions - use 6.1.38 or 6.1.40 or windows 11 will lock up.

I also have the extension pack installed.

This script will install the extension pack with virtualbox not running.

cat bin/addvbext
echo update VirtualBox
VBOX_VERSION=/usr/bin/VBoxManage --version | awk -F_ {'print $1'} | awk -Fr {'print $1'}
VBOX_EXT_VERSION=$VBOX_VERSION

VBOX_EXT=echo Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-${VBOX_EXT_VERSION}.vbox-extpack

cd /tmp
/usr/bin/wget http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/$VBOX_VERSION/$VBOX_EXT
echo y | /usr/bin/VBoxManage extpack install --replace $VBOX_EXT
rm -f $VBOX_EXT

Gentlemen, thank you for your help. I have been very busy these last few hours and I am now at a point where I have uninstalled Virtualbox (probably for good, although never say never) and I am now installing updates in my very first virtual machine using KVM/QEMU.
I have a feeling it works faster than Vbox, although with some things this is not really showing. I could install the OS from a live ISO to a harddisk in one go and that boosts morale.

Again, thank you for the time you used to help me, feel guilty I changed to a different system in the mean time, but to be honest, I am glad I did.

There’s no need to feel guilty. Use what works best for you.

I’m using KVM. I did try “virtualbox” but I prefer KVM. And support is directly in the kernel, so fewer issues.