Virtualbox 5.2 half-installed on LM 18 crashes system

[foozydoge]

Hey everyone,
Sorry to come spamming here, but I'm just desperate. Here's the story of my woes:

I'm relatively noob with Linux, but I am not a stranger to PCs, hardware, troubleshooting. This is my first official Linux machine and my #1 goal is to learn my system inside and out and be on the level of a sysadmin.
I've got Mint 18 KDE build installed on an ASUS Strix laptop, about two years old, in dual boot with the preinstalled Windows 10 (also a reason why I went to Linux).
Version: Linux version 4.4.124-0404124-generic (kernel@tangerine) (gcc version 5.4.0 20160609 (Ubuntu 5.4.0-6ubuntu1~16.04.9) )

I tried following the instructions at this link to install Virtualbox from the official Oracle package:
https://www.linuxbabe.com/debian/instal ... -9-stretch
dpkg was about 81% along, and then my laptop froze.

- The display went to a pattern of multicolored lines, looks a bit like a paused VHS. Photo here: https://imgur.com/a/vceeOov
- No response to input, so can't even do the magic SysRq combination
- I had to do a hard reset, boot into recovery mode and run fsck to clear the file system for normal startup.

Afterwards I tried to reconfigure all half-installed packages with apt. It failed, and gave off the following error message:
dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'sudo dpkg --configure -a' to correct the problem.

When running the aforementioned dpkg command, the machine freezes up again with the same symptoms.

I tried tracking down the exact timeline of the crash, and it looks like the last commands were lines from a shell script to configure Virtualbox. I tried taking a look at the actual script, but my script-fu is not yet useful. I am currently studying a bash scripting tutorial to be able to understand what is going on.

Here are some of the last output before my first crash:

Jul 11 19:05:16 MACHINENAME vboxdrv.sh: VirtualBox services started.
Jul 11 19:05:16 MACHINENAME systemd[1]: Started VirtualBox Linux kernel module.
Jul 11 19:05:16 MACHINENAME systemd[1]: Starting vboxballoonctrl-service.service...
Jul 11 19:05:16 MACHINENAME systemd[1]: Starting vboxweb-service.service...
Jul 11 19:05:16 MACHINENAME systemd[1]: Starting vboxautostart-service.service...
Jul 11 19:05:16 MACHINENAME systemd[1]: Started vboxweb-service.service.
Jul 11 19:05:16 MACHINENAME systemd[1]: Started vboxballoonctrl-service.service.
Jul 11 19:05:16 MACHINENAME systemd[1]: Started vboxautostart-service.service.

The running shell script sounds like vboxdrv.sh

During my second crash, I think the running script was postinst-common.sh that is only supposed to register and start services.

Do you guys have any ideas for me, while I trudge through my tutorials? Shall I manually edit the dpkg status file to erase anything to do with virtualbox? Could it be a hardware issue that has nothing to do with my OS?
Thank you in advance!

P.S. Forgot to mention, Virtualbox actually (sort of) starts up when the executable is run, but can't add or import machines, as the application is still in a half-installed state. Otherwise, most things on this laptop are functional, cooling runs ok, all components are recognized and functional. Searching the Asus forums for similar issues turned up empty. Just so you guys know I've been doing the due diligence. Would really appreciate some help.

[smurphos]

Where you following that tutorial to the letter - including adding the repo for debian stretch?

If so that's the problem.

https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads for the official instructions.

For Mint 18 (based on Ubuntu 16.04 - codename xenial) the repo to add is deb https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian xenial contrib

How to attempt a fix?

First thing to try (this probably won't work but the error message may help) is

apt purge virtualbox*

[foozydoge]

Hey there, yes I can confirm that the stretch repo for xenial was added via bash, and was also showing in my third party repos in the gui package manager. I'll double-check the path tomorrow, for now I shut down for the night. Thanks for the quick reply!

[foozydoge]

Update: my sysadmin buddy tried to help me out and changed from xorg to nvidia drivers in the driver manager,my laptop froze during the apt cache update, and since then I can no longer boot into graphical mode. Does this mean my GPU drivers are fudged, and is there a command line to set it back to xorg?

[smurphos]

Update: my sysadmin buddy tried to help me out

...oh dear. I think you might be getting your buddy to help you reinstall at this rate. First rule of a bolluxed package issue - fix it before trying to install other packages, particularly ones fundamental to the operation of your machine...

I honestly think at this stage you might be better booting from a live USB, rescuing any non-backed up personal files and doing a fresh install.

I'm guessing being on Mint 18 you probably haven't installed Timeshift and have a system backup to restore from? if you have you can restore from a live USB - Timeshift is a default package on 18.3 or 19 live images.

[foozydoge]

I didn't say he was a 'good' sysadmin, hehe...
Well I can still boot into the Windows install, I'll mount the Mint FS and try to clean up dpkg, then try apt autoremove again. Thanks again smurphos

[foozydoge]

Update: I un-fudged my gpu drivers and partially fixed my dpkg problem. Alternate boot was not required, I managed it all from the root shell in recovery mode.

Some good things to know, for the next newb:

dpkg -C will show a list of unconfigured or badly configured packages, and suggest solutions. I just ran dpkg --configure <packagename> one at a time, respecting dependencies.

ubuntu-drivers devices will show the current driver in use. In my case, it was the proprietary nvidia binary. It matched the name of one of the problematic packages from earlier. I zapped the nvidia package with apt remove and was then able to start Plasma with the startx command. (very proud of myself, btw )

I'm not out of the woods yet, but at least i've gt my machineback, and i've learned a few things in the process. Will post back if I learn anything of substance on the crash and virtualbox issue. Cheers guys!

[smurphos]

Well done....