Sarah Cinnamon running without video hardware acceleration under Virtual Box

[HankG]

I've been having the same problem under VBox 5.0.24 on OSX and Windows 10 Host OS's and it is driving me crazy. I finally broke down and manually installed the VBox guest additions and it fixed it on my Windows 10 box (at least it appears to have ). I guess I would be excited but for two things. First, in the dozens of Mint 17 installs I've done over the past couple of years (all in VBox VMs of various sorts) I've never had to manually install the guest additions, ever. That was my big selling point to everyone was that it "just worked." You can go from ISO to fully installed and patched new VM in under 15 minutes and not mess around with installing a whole bunch of stuff just to get guest additions to work. At least your default install had what it was needed to install guest additions so it my instructions to non-Linux users is still not too onerous a task for people not experienced with Linux.

However, the second thing, when I go to install the guest additions it says they are already there. I knew the were there because my shared folders were working, as was the dynamic screen resizing et cetera. So, what gives? I'm hoping that this solves the problem on my OSX host OS stuff as well, but I won't know until later tonight.


UPDATE: No this isn't working well at all. Chromium and Electron apps at best don't render well and at worst corrupt the display and force me to reset the machine via VirtualBox's menu...

[rene]

The on Mint 18 by default installed version of the guest additions is 5.0.18 which is the same version as its version of virtualbox itself. Supposedly things work out of the box when on a VB 5.0.18 host -- "supposedly" since I myself also use 5.0.24 on Mint 17.3 and have not verified. But the issue then is an incompatibility between 5.0.18 guest utils and a 5.0.24 host which, the latter not being installed or controlled by Mint, should really count as either an Oracle (or user) problem more than a Mint one.

[Cosmo.]

Using older GE in a newer VB version can work, but they are not guaranteed to fully work. Out of this reason the guest additions give a system message (after some time of running the VM), that a newer GE is available and should get updated. So far it goes as designed. From the documentation:

Each version of VirtualBox, even minor releases, ship with their own version of the Guest Additions. While the interfaces through which the VirtualBox core communicates with the Guest Additions are kept stable so that Guest Additions already installed in a VM should continue to work when VirtualBox is upgraded on the host, for best results, it is recommended to keep the Guest Additions at the same version.

Starting with VirtualBox 3.1, the Windows and Linux Guest Additions therefore check automatically whether they have to be updated. If the host is running a newer VirtualBox version than the Guest Additions, a notification with further instructions is displayed in the guest.

Mint has decided some versions ago to pre-install the guest-additions. A bad decision IMO, as it makes it necessary, to remove in a guest at first those 3 related packages via the package management, before the current GE can installed. (After that the GE can easily get updated. So at the end those pre-installed GE have in a physical installation no use and in the virtual environment they provide trouble and unnecessary work.

[ajgreeny]

There seem to have been quite a few problems with 3D acceleration in the most recent versions of VBox as shown in the page at https://www.virtualbox.org/search?q=chr ... on&wiki=on of the VBox forums.

I had big problems with chromium in particular in my guests (using VBox 5.0.24 at present but had the problem for several previous versions) and the only way to avoid this was to run the VMs with no 3D acceleration. My Guest-additions are always up to date.

Using 3D also stops other things behaving properly, eg if you use the freshplayer plugin in order to run the latest flash version in Firefox it will give you a black box instead of a video.

I have now moved from Cinnamon in my VM of Mint 17.2 (not moved to Sarah yet) to Mate which works fine and seems to not require 3D, or certainly does not show any error messages which cinnamon did, just like yours.

[UliBär]

Hello there,

i just registered only for this topic. Have been running Mint 17.3 (Betsy also) (all 64 bit) on all versions of VirtualBox on Windows 7 64 bit from this year without issue, but with Sarah (64 bit) i get exactly the same problem as this threads topic. 3D acceleration is not activated, although the guest utils are loaded. I even reverted VirtualBox on Windows 7 host to version 5.0.18 to no avail, the message appears on desktop after sign on. Also the terminal says, 3D ist not available.

Meanwhile i found a way to get 3D acceleration (unfortunately only somehow) working: I removed the inbuilt VirtualBox guest extensions in Sarah with Synaptic packet manager. Rebooted the system and installed the GuestAdditions via ISO directly from Oracle. This works with 5.0.16 and also with the actual 5.0.24, but "speed" is more like a crawl, although the terminal says 3d acceleration is enabled and the message banner at sign on is gone.

Meanwhile i don't suspect VirtualBox to be the cause anymore, my experience tends more towards Sarah - sorry.

[HankG]

Yeah, it seems like peak Mint/VirtualBox kumbaya was Mint 17.1 and VB 4.x. I've had nothing but trouble with VB since 5 and each successive release of Mint seems to be making the problems worse not better. Maybe I'll try rolling back to VB 4 and build some new VMs and see if they do any better.

[Total_Blue]

I am running a 64bit Linux Mint 18 Host with version of 5.0.18 of Virtualbox from the repos. As a test, I am doing an install of Linux Mint 18 in Virtualbox as I write this.

I have set Video Memory to 128 MB and have enabled 3D Acceleration.

When the live session booted up, it had the message that it was running in Software Rendering mode. I ignored this for the moment and proceeded with the install of Linux Mint.

When prompted to add the third party addons for graphics and sound, I checked the box and clicked continue.

As this is a Virtualbox install, I chose Erase Disk and Install Linux Mint.

As this is just a test setup, at the screen where I enter my name and choose a password, I opted to select Log in Automatically and did not use encryption.

After the installation was complete, I selected Restart Now.

Once Linux Mint loaded up, I once again had the message I was running in Software Rendering Mode.

I clicked on Virtual Boxe's Devices, and selected Insert Guest Addons CD Image.

I got a message saying it could not find the Virtualbox 5.0.18 Guest Additions disk image and asked if I wanted to download from the Internet, so I selected Download. I was prompted again, and selected Download again.

Once Download was complete, I was prompted to insert the Disk Image, which I did.

It then asked if I wanted to run it, so I selected Run.

After being prompted again and typing yes, it started the install.

Once it was complete, I ejected the Guest Additions CD and restarted Linux Mint 18 in Virtualbox.

Once it booted up and logged into the desktop, I no longer received the Running in Software Rendering Mode message.

[rene]

Very interesting. The Guest Additions ISO not being found is fine; that only means you hadn't in fact installed said ISO on the host system. What however is not fine is that things didn't Just Work on a Mint 18 VB 5.0.18 host without replacing the standard guest additions of a Mint 18 VB 5.0.18 guest. It would seem to say that VB 5.0.18 is simply broken, but one would've expected such to be tested before Mint 18 released with it.

[Total_Blue]

Anytime I have installed another operating system in Virtualbox, be in Linux Mint, Windows etc., I have had to manually install the Guest Additions to utilize certain things. To be fair though, it is only with Sarah that I have ever had the Software Mode Rendering issue. It could also be a Cinnamon issue, I have not tried it with LM18 Mate.

[Total_Blue]

As an update to my previous post about doing the test install in Linux Mint in a Virtualbox on a Linux Mint 18 system. I booted up my Windows 7 laptop and did the same there.

The differences between my Linux Mint test and the Windows test are;

On the Linux Mint system, I was able to allocate 4gb of Ram, whereas I was only able to allocate 1gb on the Windows setup.
I was using Virtualbox 5.0.18 on the Linux Mint system, whereas I had to download and install 5.0.24 on the Windows system.
I followed the same steps I used on the Linux Mint system, with the exception that I was not prompted to download the Guest Additions CD for version 5.0.24 as it was found right away.

Following the same steps as previously, I ended up with the same result. Prior to installing the Guest Additions, I had the Software Rendering Mode message, but after installing the Guest Addition and rebooting, I no longer got the message.

[rene]

It could also be a Cinnamon issue, I have not tried it with LM18 Mate.

MATE isn't 3D-accelerated (by virtue of being non-fancy, not by being slow) and will as such not show the problem.

I would myself concur with the original poster that things worked well on 17.x. I switched to Oracle VirtualBox 5 when playing around with Ubuntu 16.04 on Mint 17.3 due to problems but had been installing standard 17.x guests into standard 17.x hosts without single issue. As to your follow-up; yes, had to install the 5.0.24 guest additions to run a hardware-rendered Mint 18 guest on a Mint 17.3 5.0.24 host as well. Assumed this to be a VB 5.0.18 vs. 5.0.24 issue though, whereas things not working on a Mint 18 5.0.18 host as per your report would say it to be either a 5.0.18 issue per se, or a specific Mint 18 5.0.18 issue. Don't yet have a hardware-install of Mint 18 around to try myself.

[Total_Blue]

It does appear to be a Cinnamon specific issue rather than Linux Mint 18 itself. Doing a search, I quite a number of people that use Cinnamon, having similar issues, including the ones over on Arch that are using CInnamon. https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=208960

In regards to Linux Mint 18 Mate, you are correct on that one. I did a install and that one works fine out.

[ajgreeny]

As I said earlier, I use Xubuntu 14.04 as host with VBox-5.0-24 and have now installed Mint-18-Mate version so the 3D problem is not something I see. I was, however, surprised to note in the updates that came after installing Mint that vobox-guest-additions 5.0.18 was downloaded, though thankfully my VBox was itself wise enough not to uninstall my guest additions version 5.0.24 and install that lower version.

I must now remove the guest additions package completely using synaptic in Mint 18 and continue updating guest-additions as I have always done in other VMs by running the VBoxLinux.run file direct from the Guest-additions iso that is automounted in my VMs.

[Cosmo.]

It would seem to say that VB 5.0.18 is simply broken

Of course it is broken. Alone 5 regressions for this version can be found in the changelog, the related release thread is 3 pages long, the post of one of the developers tells the remaining story.

The decision to add VB into the repos as a freezed package without updates for minor versions was the very worst idea.

[Cosmo.]

Update:

I just saw, that Oracle has withdrawn all downloads for VB 5.0.x for Ubuntu 16.04 base. Until now I don't see any notice, why this has been done.
That leaves only the brand-new 5.1 as an option for LM 18.

[rene]

Experienced quite a few Mint 18 Cinnamon 64-bit screen corruption issues with 3D accel and the 5.0.24 guest additions on 5.0.24 tonight, even though it mostly works otherwise. Indeed VB 5.0.x and Ubuntu 16.04 / Mint 18 appear "at odds" ...

[Total_Blue]

Hi Cosmo,

I just saw, that Oracle has withdrawn all downloads for VB 5.0.x for Ubuntu 16.04 base. Until now I don't see any notice, why this has been done.
That leaves only the brand-new 5.1 as an option for LM 18.

This is new, and it is not just for Linux. I see that the Windows version is also 5.1. Earlier today, It gave 5.0.24 as the Windows download.

[Cosmo.]

VB 5.1 has been released yesterday, as expected after the RC a week ago. But that is not my point. The point is, that Oracle withdraw the complete 5.0 series for Ubuntu 16.04. They are still available for other Linux versions (inclusive Ubuntu 14.04 and 12.04) and for all other major OS like Windows and OS X. Such a withdraw is something, what I cannot remember having ever seen for VB in the past. I also do not find any more information about it. The only guess, which I have at now, is the possibility, that this might have something to do with usage of dkms for building VB modules, as this is mentioned in the change-log of VB 5.1.

This gives of course a problem for Mint 18 hosts. There is only VB 5.1 available for now, but from my experience every new major release (change in the second version number) was in the past far away from being really stable. The other option would be to use VB from the Ubuntu-repositories, but that would be the buggy 5.0.18; I further suspect, that the reason, why Oracle withdraw 5.0 for Ubuntu 16.04 completely, will be also valid for the version in the repos.

I am curious to see in the next days or weeks, what will be published about that matter.

[Total_Blue]

I removed 5.0.18 from my system and installed the new version, 5.1. I then went to do a clean new install of Linux Mint 18 Cinnamon, however the Hardware Acceleration message still comes up when I boot up with the ISO.

Funny think happened when I went to install the 5.1. (Cosmo - Please note)

From the directions on Oracles site for Debian based systems;

--> Add the following line to your /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian xenial contrib

which I did.

Then in terminal, I did
wget -q https://www.virtualbox.org/download/ora ... x_2016.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -
wget -q https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -

I then did a
sudo apt-get update

followed by a

sudo apt-get purge virtualbox

The funny thing that happened is that not only did 5.0.18 did get removed, for some reason, 5.0.24 was then installed at the same time.

Once it completed, I went into Synaptic, sure enough, it showed Virtualbox 5.0.24 installed, but it also showed Virtualbox 5.1 as an option. From there, I removed 5.0.24 and installed 5.1.

[HankG]

I've confirmed that Chromium and Electron apps crap out under Mint 18 and VirtualBox 5.0.x under OSX 10.11. I'm going to try 5.1 to see if this works any better. If it doesn't I'll start a new thread on the Chromium issue. Disappointing .