Newest gentoo x86 hangs on boot in Virtualbox

[gamander]

There is a similar thread here. The latest gentoo x86 release install-x86-minimal-20131029.iso no longer boots in Virtualbox, it hangs after the ramdisk has finished its job:

>>Booting (initramfs)..
INIT: version 2.88 booting

OpenRc 0.11.8 is starting up Gentoo Linux (i686)

After a while I get an endless stream of warning messages like
INFO: rcu_sched detected stalls on CPUs/tasks: {} (detected by 0, t=6002 jiffies, g=10000, c=9999, q=11)


I downloaded an older release image install-x86-minimal-20130820.iso and it worked without problems. Then I compiled a generic kernel from gentoo-sources with "genkernel all" and installed lilo. When I try to boot from hd I get the same error as above, it hangs after:

>>Booting (initramfs)..
INIT: version 2.88 booting


Something happened between 8/20 and 10/29 that prevents the newly built kernel/initramfs or init program from booting in Virtualbox. My Virtualbox PC has 1 CPU with VT-x disabled (my real CPU doesn't support it). Everything else is vanilla Virtualbox hardware.

[Thuggin420]

Yeah man. This happens to me too. Exact same error, but it works fine in workstation 10.

Picture:

[pwaring]

[lazykoala]

I got the same issue.

virtualbox 4.3.6 r91406
gentoo: install-x86-minimal-20131224.iso

Stuck with the following message:
INFO: rcu_sched detected stalls on CPUs/tasks: {} (detected by 0, t=6002, jiffies, g=6436, c=6435, q=12)
INFO: Stall ended before state dump start

[lazykoala]

The last line will repeat many times with different values.

[pwaring]

As I've pointed out, this is a bug in VirtualBox. You have two options:

1. Use an older install CD which doesn't come with a 3.10 or later kernel.
2. Create the Gentoo virtual machine on a host which does support hardware virtualization and make sure that you install a kernel below 3.10. You can then export this VM image to a machine which does not have support for hardware virtualization (this is the workaround I used).

[lokeshj]

i faced the same problem while installing in my virtual box. since i don't have another laptop / desktop, i have to go for the option 1 ie. install from older CD which comes with a kernel older than 3.10. but how do i get the cd? the iso images available on gentoo are from realease 10.1 onwards but i don't know which kernel they use... is there any way to find out?

[pwaring]

The upstream kernel reached version 3.10 in June 2013, so if you find an ISO for your architecture from before that date then you should be fine (I don't know exactly when Gentoo switched to 3.10 for the install CD but it can't be before 3.10 upstream was released...). The only problem is that for x86 only the DVD images seem to be available, which are a substantially larger download than the minimal install + stage3 + only the packages you need.

[lokeshj]

thanks pwaring.
found an older iso from here: http://linuxtracker.org/index.php?page=downloadcheck&id=a65566195bc8c81acc68adbf193394a92e2a9f1b
and this time it has successfully booted

[lokeshj]

while i have been able to boot using the older iso, what should i do when downloading the tarballs? do i need to have the older tarballs also?

[pwaring]

You can use the latest stage3 tarball, you just need to make sure that when you emerge gentoo-sources (or genkernel) you specify a version number, for example:

[pwaring]

If anyone wants a pre-built VirtualBox Vagrant box with the 3.4.x kernel which will boot under software virtualization I have made one available here (approximately 950MB):

http://www.compsoc.man.ac.uk/~pwaring/gentoo-x86-no-vtx.box

I can't guarantee that this will always be available, so please download a copy rather than referring to the URL above directly in any Vagrantfiles. Any use of the box is entirely at your own risk.

[emc]