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MrSynAckSter
Asked: 2018-05-12 10:58:54 +0800 CST

Virtualbox from apt does not detect most of my CPUs

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Virtualbox installed with sudo apt-get install virtualbox runs fine, but throws error: 

VERR_INVALID_CPU_ID (-1018) - Invalid Virtual CPU ID

When running a VM. Checking the source I find: 

#define VERR_INVALID_CPU_ID                 (-1018)
/** Too many VCPUs. */

Going into the settings it appears that Virtualbox thinks I only have 2 CPUs, when I have 24. What's going on here?

I currently don't have VX-t on this machine (I don't think it supports it, at least based on the results of kvm-ok) but from the information I could find VX-t isn't necessary for Virtualbox to run a VM. Shouldn't it crash if it absolutely requires Vx-t on?

Added Quirk: Bios says virtualization technologies are in fact activated. So now we have an additional mystery.

Some other posts imply the apt version is broken and I absolutely need to reinstall from Oracle. I want to hear from Ubuntu: Should the version from apt-get be working? Do I absolutely need Vx-t on?

virtualbox apt virtualization kvm

1 Answers

  1. The user manual for VirtualBox states hardware virtualization must be enabled for SMP to function properly.

    Even though VirtualBox does not always require hardware virtualization, enabling it is required in
the following scenarios:

    VirtualBox’s  64-bit  guest  support  (added  with  version  2.0)  and  multiprocessing  (SMP,
    added with version 3.0) both require hardware virtualization to be enabled.  (This is not
    much of a limitation since the vast majority of today’s 64-bit and multicore CPUs ship with
    hardware virtualization anyway; the exceptions to this rule are e.g. older Intel Celeron and
    AMD Opteron CPUs.)

    Perhaps your BIOS supports hardware virtualization but your CPU doesn't?

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