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Gryu
Asked: 2020-03-21 13:08:47 +0800 CST

Ubuntu VBox Guest long boot because of long Loading initial ramdisk

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I have a Virtualbox 6.1. The issue have been noticed in 19.10 with this VirtualBox version and emerged again in 20.04. Since VirtualBox 6.0 without this issue requires older dependencies to be installed, the issue becomes actual again.

$ sudo apt install virtualbox=6.0.14-dfsg-1
...
 virtualbox : Depends: python3 (< 3.8) but 3.8.2-0ubuntu2 is to be installed
              Depends: python3.7 but it is not installable
              Depends: libgsoap-2.8.75 but it is not installable
              Depends: libpython3.7 (>= 3.7.0) but it is not installable

Guest additions are installed. Disk is dynamic, VDI, ext4 on SATA, AHCI controller.

$ df -h | grep -v snap | grep -v tmpfs | grep -v udev
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1        24G  8,9G   14G  39% /

$ sudo fdisk -l
Device     Boot Start      End  Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sda1  *     2048 51126271 51124224 24,4G 83 Linux

$ cat /etc/fstab
UUID=c63a430c-8a90-4548-a13a-1702169d4ba2 /       ext4    errors=remount-ro  0       1
/swapfile                                 none    swap    sw                 0       0

When I was booting OS as usual without selecting a kernel to boot from, it just wait some time before booting without displaying anything.

Hitting Esc button just after VirtualBox logo appearing, I entered into Advanced options for Ubuntu and selected for loading Ubuntu, with Linux 5.3.0-42-generic kernel.

In this case the next is displayed:

Loading Linux 5.3.0-42-generic ... # (which took for about 2-9 secs)
Loading initial ramdisk ...        # (which took for about 30-35 secs)

enter image description here

Other 16.04 guest with similar characteristics behaves the same way as 18.04 do.

Host with 19.10 loads ramdisk in 4 seconds. No dual boot. Only Ubuntu installed. Filesystem is ext4. RAM: 16Gb. Disk: SSD.

enter image description here

enter image description here

On other my weaker PC with Virtualbox 6.1.6 (Core 2 Duo 8400, 8Gb, SSD with 2 cores and 3.2 Gb RAM for VM) 5.4.0.28 kernel loads in 10 seconds, initial ramdisk loads in 58 seconds.

Why ramdisk requires so much time to be loaded and how this time could be reduced?

virtualbox boot 20.04

1 Answers

  1. Trying to solve an issue with my Bluetooth adapter I recompiled some kernel and started with it. After this I could not boot VirtualBox VMs. So trying to solve the new issue I've purged Virtulbox 6.1.12 and installed Virtualbox 6.0.18 from repositories.

    I've also tried 6.1.14 version and different host kernels and different guest settings without success.

    With Virtualbox 6.0.18 the issue with long Loading initial ramdisk is gone. But it is only applicable to 19.10. The newer 20.04 contains only VirtualBox 6.1. Installing VirtualBox 6.0 in 20.04 requires older python: virtualbox : Depends: python3 (< 3.8) but 3.8.2-0ubuntu2 is to be installed.

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