Ubuntu VM on Virtualbox keeps aborting

Question

I have Virtualbox (v4.3.18) installed on my Mac X (10.10) and created a VM with Ubuntu on it (ubuntu-14.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso). After the installation was completed, it asked to reboot, and when I checked the storage settings, the iso had been automatically removed. I went ahead and install software on the VM, but walked away and came back to find it had aborted . When I try to run the VM again, I see the following messages and I am unable to get back to Ubuntu: :

The only thing I have been able to do is add the iso back in the storage settings and re-install Ubuntu to be able to use it, but always temporarily since it keeps aborting. I don't want to "try it without installing" it, I want to be able to turn it off and on whenever I want and not have to reinstall every time. Does anyone know why the VM is aborting?

Answer 1

Is the "Enable EFI" parameter checked? it is on the system/motheboard page of the VM.

I met a similar problem once and checking the box solved the problem.

Answer 2

This started happening to me with VBox 5.1.24 and Ubuntu 17.04 both of which have the latest patches as of July 22 2017. Ubuntu Desktop would attempt to start for 5-10 minutes. The purple splash screen transitioned back to a black text screen with a blinking cursor. The VM would become Aborted after 5-10 minutes. Doubling the amount of RAM for the VM (to 8 GB) resolved the issue.

Answer 3

It might not be because of the virtual box problem. it might because of the memory issue. If you have less swap and it gets full then there is high chance of vbox machine gets aborted. To check that first check weather your swap memory is full or not using htop command. If htop is not installed ( sudo apt install htop in ubuntu, check for other flavors) Put htop command and see if the swap is getting full. If yes you can increase the swap memory by following command

sudo swapoff -a
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1G count=8
sudo chmod 0600 /swapfile
sudo mkswap /swapfile
sudo swapon /swapfile

And then you do htop and see the swap size. it should be 8gb and not full. now your vbox won't be aborting repeatedly. It solved my vbox problem after lot of research