GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 761343
GParted LiveCD won't start on VirtualBox... except with EFI enabled
Last modified: 2016-08-03 02:40:59 UTC
The latest LiveCD begins booting on VirtualBox, but hangs after displaying the Debian licensing/warranty information. It appears to be trying and somehow failing to start up the GUI. Despite leaving it alone for hours, nothing happens, and there's no evidence of any activity. It also won't respond to signals or interrupts, and the only solution is to forcibly reset/"power down" the VM. Thankfully, a workaround was discovered by the folks at https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=68623 that appears to work: set the VirtualBox configuration for the machine to boot with EFI. As commented there, this appears to be a regression caused as an unfortunate side effect of the new EFI support (bug 754587). This appears to be a VirtualBox-specific problem, but given that it's a regression, I think it's safe to call it a bug with the GParted LiveCD, and not VirtualBox. The existence of a simple workaround really does not excuse bizarre behavior by an important tool of system administration.
The 0.25.0-1 release of GParted Live now requires an i686 or higher. Perhaps your VM was built for an i586 or lower? You might try creating a new i686+ VirtualBox VM to see if that works.
(In reply to Curtis Gedak from comment #1) > The 0.25.0-1 release of GParted Live now requires an i686 or higher. > > Perhaps your VM was built for an i586 or lower? > > You might try creating a new i686+ VirtualBox VM to see if that works. My VM was built for the latest 64 bit version of Debian. That's clearly *not* the problem.
it also occurs here with the system I'm using.. though here I am using Vbox on OsX the following issues tend to occur while trying out 0.25 with both 32 and 64-bit releases.. - booting in bios fails after the choosing text/gfx mode selection (which is the second or third text prompt) - the uefi mode works properly, so this is good - Gparted was tried in Vmware and its bios boot has no issue .. so something in gparted on vbox is causing the stall.. must be a bug in Gparted because it occurs with both 32-bit and 64-bit releases and this Gparted-Vbox stall also occurs on other vbox platforms
GParted Live is based on Debian Live (Sid). If you can test with Debian Live (Sid) it would help determine where the problem might be. If the problem still exists then the issue would be with upstream Debian.
In comment #4 I should clarify that if the problem still exists with Debian Live (Sid), then it implies an incompatibility with Debian Live (Sid) and Virtual Box. Since I have successfully booted the i686 image using BIOS on x86 and x86_64 computers with NVidia, AMD/ATI, and Intel graphics, in addition to VMWare player, it is still possible (and perhaps even likely) that the issue is with Virtual Box.
update: 0.25-1 -- can't boot (bios) into GFX or tty1 sessions gparted-live-0.25.0-3-i686.iso -- can't boot into the GFX session(option 0), but can do text session to tty1(option 2) It looks like 0.25.0-3 works slightly better..When using option "0" (for gfx boot), attempting to load "X", the motd would display,but then the freeze would occur -- however with "0.25.0-3" it is possible to go to tty2 with "alt-rightarrow". "option 2" works on 0.25.0-3, and it brings the user to an interactive shell. There is no stall when choosing the text-mode session in 0.25.0-3, so this is good news..
correction: alt-arrow (tty2) can be done in the gfx boot for 0.25-1 ..Here I have an OsX machine with the older Gparted...case being here is the testing Debian iso images do all work without issue. That being said, I would also like to try the "sid" Live release that Curtis is mentioning but couldn't spot it. Once I try that I will report back here to confirm if there's this same issue. Perhaps it is something inside vbox, perhaps not. Here it is occurring on Vbox/Osx and Vbox/Linux for Gparted 0.25.0-1 to 0.25.0-3(current) for both 64-bit and 32-bit.. sounds too distant to be a Vbox issue.. note: it's not a "total" system freeze, since I can switch terminals, this would imply less to do with vbox and more to do with gparted. thanks
Did you try to select the KMS mode from the boot menu? It works here. BTW, I have uploaded GParted live 0.25-4 in the testing release, and it comes updated Linux kernel (4.4). Steve
kms mode was tried and release 0.25-4 still shows same though i can still switch to tty2
I was able to confirm the failure to boot to a graphical interface with the default GParted Live settings with VirtualBox 4.1.44-dfsg-1+deb7u1ubuntu1 using BIOS mode. We still do not know why this issue arises with VirtualBox, and only VirtualBox. This problem does not occur with VMWare, nor does it occur with physical computers using Intel, NVidia, or ATI/AMD graphics. WORKAROUND: Tested with GParted Live 0.26.0-1. When booting GParted Live with VirtualBox using BIOS mode, choose *Other modes of GParted Live*, then choose *GParted Live (Default settins, KMS)*. KMS mode permits GParted Live to boot to the graphical interface with VirtualBox using BIOS mode. To workaround window manager issues in VirtualBox, right-click on the desktop, and choose *fluxbox menu -> Restart*.
Booting with GParted Live 0.26.1-5 now works in VirtualBox BIOS mode. Further the missing window bar management issue has been fixed. For reference see also: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=807015 Closing this report as RESOLVED.