Installing 11.10 on fresh VirtualBox client hangs - how to debug?

Question

I am trying to create an 11.10 VirtualBox client using the same DVD I used to upgrade my host system. (It happens to be the alternate DVD ISO.)

However, it keeps hanging when the progress bar reaches about 70%. The last command above the progress bar is log-output -t ubiquity laptop-detect but this appeared much earlier in the process (the progress bar keeps going and only hangs later).

By searching for symptoms I eventually found out what my specific problem was (see below), but I still don't know how to find an error message while I'm busy installing on a fresh VirtualBox.

Are there logs I can access, a command-line mode I can switch to, or some other means of finding a report of what is going wrong, assuming there is one?

(If it is not possible to do so, please provide some kind of authoritative reference confirming this.)

Answer 1

I tried the following without resolving the problem, but they may be useful to know:

• increasing client HDD space to 9GB (it actually won't install without this)
• increasing client memory to 1GB (apparently there may be problems with only 512MB)
• disabling client network adapter to stop the installer trying to make network connections

In my case, I needed to change my client storage options, which solved the problem with hanging:

Option 1: ext3

Ubuntu 11.10 creates an ext4 partition by default. This debian-installer bug gave me a hint to try an ext3 partition instead. When I did this, the installation completed successfully.

Option 2 (preferred): Enable host I/O cache

However, I think a better solution is to create a new client machine and then tick "Enable host I/O cache" on the SATA controller of the client machine (find it under Storage on the client machine settings). [1] [2] When I did this, I could successfully install Ubuntu using the default (ext4) partition options, which I prefer for no other reason than that it is the default.

Other candidates

If this didn't help you try:

• checking if you need to install third-party software (thanks John)
• running the memory test on both your host and client machines (you'll find the memory test as one of the options in the first menu of the installation CD/DVD) (thanks Barafu)

How to debug? I don't know.

I posted here on AU, the VirtualBox forums, and solved it by searching for my specific symptoms. I still don't know how to retrieve error messages from the installer itself.

Answer 2

In my case it was a trouble with physical memory of host machine. I've run memtest on host machine and it passed OK. Then I have run it in VirtualBox and it ended in errors after an hour. Having replaced the suspicious memory bank, I repeated the test overnight to see no problems. Before replacement, I could not install Mint.

Answer 3

My installation required the selection of the third party software to enable the wireless adaptor. Should have read the banners more carefully.