[gentoo-user] Anyone using kernel 4.1.8 in a virtualbox guest machine?

[gentoo-user] Anyone using kernel 4.1.8 in a virtualbox guest machine?

[walt]

(I'm asking this question only because I'm curious about the problem I'm
about to describe.  I've already worked around it.)

I updated the kernel in my gentoo virtualbox guest machine to 4.1.8 and
got a kernel panic after rebooting the guest.  (The panic was in the
guest machine, not the host machine.  Has anyone noticed how ambiguous
our English language is?)

Anyway, I rebooted the guest machine with vmlinuz.old (3.18.21) and
then updated the guest to vanilla-sources-4.2.3 with no problems.

(I omit several hours of confused reconfiguring/recompiling/rebooting
because you really don't want to hear about them.)

So, what is different or strange about kernel 4.1.8?  Anyone have any
problems with it on real hardware, or in other virtual environments
like qemu, vmware, xen, etc?

Re: [gentoo-user] Anyone using kernel 4.1.8 in a virtualbox guest machine?

[Alec Ten Harmsel]

On Sun, Oct 04, 2015 at 05:47:37PM -0700, walt wrote:
> (I'm asking this question only because I'm curious about the problem I'm
> about to describe.  I've already worked around it.)
> 
> I updated the kernel in my gentoo virtualbox guest machine to 4.1.8 and
> got a kernel panic after rebooting the guest.  (The panic was in the
> guest machine, not the host machine.  Has anyone noticed how ambiguous
> our English language is?)
> 
> Anyway, I rebooted the guest machine with vmlinuz.old (3.18.21) and
> then updated the guest to vanilla-sources-4.2.3 with no problems.
> 
> (I omit several hours of confused reconfiguring/recompiling/rebooting
> because you really don't want to hear about them.)
> 
> So, what is different or strange about kernel 4.1.8?  Anyone have any
> problems with it on real hardware, or in other virtual environments
> like qemu, vmware, xen, etc?
> 

I am running 4.1.8 on all my machines without any problems. Without
seeing the stack trace and/or other output from the kernel panic, I
would have no idea how to figure out what the problem was. I am also not
a kernel wizard, so I probably wouldn't be much help anyways.

Alec

[gentoo-user] Re: Anyone using kernel 4.1.8 in a virtualbox guest machine?

[walt]

On Sun, 4 Oct 2015 20:59:01 -0400
Alec Ten Harmsel <alec@alectenharmsel.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 04, 2015 at 05:47:37PM -0700, walt wrote:
> > (I'm asking this question only because I'm curious about the
> > problem I'm about to describe.  I've already worked around it.)
> > 
> > I updated the kernel in my gentoo virtualbox guest machine to 4.1.8
> > and got a kernel panic after rebooting the guest.  (The panic was
> > in the guest machine, not the host machine.  Has anyone noticed how
> > ambiguous our English language is?)
> > 
> > Anyway, I rebooted the guest machine with vmlinuz.old (3.18.21) and
> > then updated the guest to vanilla-sources-4.2.3 with no problems.
> > 
> > (I omit several hours of confused
> > reconfiguring/recompiling/rebooting because you really don't want
> > to hear about them.)
> > 
> > So, what is different or strange about kernel 4.1.8?  Anyone have
> > any problems with it on real hardware, or in other virtual
> > environments like qemu, vmware, xen, etc?
> >   

> I am running 4.1.8 on all my machines without any problems. Without
> seeing the stack trace and/or other output from the kernel panic, I
> would have no idea how to figure out what the problem was. I am also
> not a kernel wizard, so I probably wouldn't be much help anyways.

Okay, thanks.  Just by chance, Fedora (which I also run in vbox)
updated to kernel 4.1.8 today and I had no trouble with it, so I'll use
their kernel config file in my gentoo guest machine to compile 4.1.8
and see if that fixes the panic.  Experiments are fun :)

[gentoo-user] Re: Anyone using kernel 4.1.8 in a virtualbox guest machine? [SOLVED]

[walt]

On Mon, 5 Oct 2015 17:56:53 -0700
walt <w41ter@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, 4 Oct 2015 20:59:01 -0400
> Alec Ten Harmsel <alec@alectenharmsel.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, Oct 04, 2015 at 05:47:37PM -0700, walt wrote:

> > > I updated the kernel in my gentoo virtualbox guest machine to
> > > 4.1.8 and got a kernel panic after rebooting the guest.
> > > 
> > > Anyway, I rebooted the guest machine with vmlinuz.old (3.18.21)
> > > and then updated the guest to vanilla-sources-4.2.3 with no
> > > problems.
> > > 
> > > (I omit several hours of confused
> > > reconfiguring/recompiling/rebooting because you really don't want
> > > to hear about them.)
> > > 
> > > So, what is different or strange about kernel 4.1.8?  Anyone have
> > > any problems with it on real hardware, or in other virtual
> > > environments like qemu, vmware, xen, etc?
 

> > I am running 4.1.8 on all my machines without any problems. Without
> > seeing the stack trace and/or other output from the kernel panic, I
> > would have no idea how to figure out what the problem was. I am also
> > not a kernel wizard, so I probably wouldn't be much help anyways.
 
> Okay, thanks.  Just by chance, Fedora (which I also run in vbox)
> updated to kernel 4.1.8 today and I had no trouble with it, so I'll
> use their kernel config file in my gentoo guest machine to compile
> 4.1.8 and see if that fixes the panic.  Experiments are fun :)

Using the Fedora kernel config file to build vanilla-sources-4.1.8 on
gentoo fixes the kernel panic.  Apparently the upstream kernel devs
changed the way 'make silentoldconfig' works so that it removes some
important config options that virtualbox needs.  Whatever they changed
in the 4.2.x kernels fixed the problem.