Booting in Virtualbox -- degraded state, no network

[Julian Foad]

Can anyone help debug my attempt to run the recent UBOS-yellow beta 9 under Virtualbox on Ubuntu 16.04? I configured Virtualbox with bridge mode networking. On logging in as root, is-system-running says 'degraded', and it doesn't get an IP address. How do I diagnose?

[Johannes Ernst]

Hi Julian,

> On Nov 13, 2016, at 14:21, Julian Foad <jul...@foad.me.uk> wrote:
>
> Can anyone help debug my attempt to run the recent UBOS-yellow beta 9 under Virtualbox on Ubuntu 16.04? I configured Virtualbox with bridge mode networking. On logging in as root, is-system-running says 'degraded', and it doesn't get an IP address. How do I diagnose?

First you want to figure out which systemd.service is not running correctly:

> sudo systemctl

will give you a long list of services, and tell you which has problems. To see details:

> sudo systemctl status <service>

and that should tell you/us something. Re bridge mode networking, sometimes networks (WiFI? Wired?) don’t like to hand out two separate IP addresses for the same machine. Try as NAT and see whether that makes any difference.

Cheers,



Johannes.

[Julian Foad]

Thank you for the suggestions.

# systemctl | grep -v "loaded active"
shows (hand-transcribed as copy-paste is not working)...

    systemd-modules-load.service  loaded failed failed  Load Kernel Modules
    vboxservice.service  loaded failed failed  VirtualBox Guest Service

The output of "systemctl status <service>" for each of those two services is in the attached screenshot "systemctl-status.png".

Networking is currently wireless to my home router (or wired if I dock the laptop). I don't know whether the router is willing to hand out multiple IP addresses.

Trying the NAT configuration... The systemctl results seem to be identical, but at least now "ip addr" lists some IP4 addresses:

    1: lo ...
    2: enp0s3: ...
        inet 10.0.2.15/24
    3: enp0s8: ...
        inet 192.168.56.101/24

So, trying to continue with the instructions...

# ubos-admin update
No packages installed or upgraded.

However, from the host machine trying to ping 10.0.2.15 and 192.168.56.101, no replies are received.

How does this look now?

- Julian

[Johannes Ernst]

You seem to have two unrelated issues.

1. Virtualbox kernel modules. It’s borked. Sorry. Analysis in bug report [1] and a workaround that just worked for me.

2. Networking. You cannot reach your virtual machine from the host if you run NAT (just like you can’t reach your computer behind your home router from the public internet, unless you forward ports on your router / VirtualBox app), so that is how it should be. If you intend to make your virtual machine accessible from your host and/or other devices on the local network, bridged is indeed what you should do, and that should work — your router willing. I have not seen this not working in home networks, but sometimes it does not work in more tightly managed corporate networks. If all fails, you can attempt to assign a static IP address from inside UBOS (“ubos-admin setnetconfig standalone”) and see whether you can reach this from outside the VM.

[1] https://github.com/uboslinux/ubos-buildconfig/issues/29

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<systemctl-status.png>

[Julian Foad]

Johannes Ernst wrote:

You seem to have two unrelated issues.

1. Virtualbox kernel modules. It’s borked. Sorry. Analysis in bug report [1] and a workaround that just worked for me.

[1] https://github.com/uboslinux/ubos-buildconfig/issues/29

Thank you! The workaround works for me too; I've noted it in the bug report. "systemctl is-system-running" now says "running", so that's solved problem 1.

2. Networking. You cannot reach your virtual machine from the host if you run NAT (just like you can’t reach your computer behind your home router from the public internet, unless you forward ports on your router / VirtualBox app), so that is how it should be.

When I said I'm trying "the NAT configuration" I was referring to the second of the two options for avoiding this problem, in step 5 in http://ubos.net/docs/users/installation/virtualbox.html
configuring two network adapters, one as NAT and one as "host-only".

But I don't know exactly which addresses, if any, I should be able to ping from outside the VM, to test that it's working.

On the UBOS VM, "ip addr" shows

    ...
    2: enp0s3: ...
        inet 10.0.2.15/24
    3: enp0s8: ...
        inet 192.168.56.101/24

neither of which I can ping from the host.

On the host, "ip addr" shows

    ...
    10: vboxnet0 ...
        inet 192.168.101.1/24 ...
 
which I can ping ok from the host ... and also from the guest (UBOS), even though it's a different (sub)network. I don't understand how this works, or whether it's useful.

If you intend to make your virtual machine accessible from your host and/or other devices on the local network, bridged is indeed what you should do, and that should work — your router willing. I have not seen this not working in home networks, but sometimes it does not work in more tightly managed corporate networks. If all fails, you can attempt to assign a static IP address from inside UBOS (“ubos-admin setnetconfig standalone”) and see whether you can reach this from outside the VM.

Trying a single "bridged" adapter again... "ip addr" in the UBOS VM shows one adapter "enp0s3" but with no ip4 address:

    1: lo: ...
    2: enp0s3: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 ... qlen 1000
        link/ether 08:00:27:... brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
        inet6 fe80::.../64 scope link
           valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

I appreciate your help this far. Any further ideas?

[Johannes Ernst]

On Nov 15, 2016, at 4:20, Julian Foad <jul...@foad.me.uk> wrote:

When I said I'm trying "the NAT configuration" I was referring to the second of the two options for avoiding this problem, in step 5 in http://ubos.net/docs/users/installation/virtualbox.html
configuring two network adapters, one as NAT and one as "host-only".

But I don't know exactly which addresses, if any, I should be able to ping from outside the VM, to test that it's working.

On the UBOS VM, "ip addr" shows

    ...
    2: enp0s3: ...
        inet 10.0.2.15/24
    3: enp0s8: ...
        inet 192.168.56.101/24

neither of which I can ping from the host.

VirtualBox networking can be confusing. I don’t think this is a UBOS issue. https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/UserManual.html has a bunch of info on it.

If you intend to make your virtual machine accessible from your host and/or other devices on the local network, bridged is indeed what you should do, and that should work — your router willing. I have not seen this not working in home networks, but sometimes it does not work in more tightly managed corporate networks. If all fails, you can attempt to assign a static IP address from inside UBOS (“ubos-admin setnetconfig standalone”) and see whether you can reach this from outside the VM.

Trying a single "bridged" adapter again... "ip addr" in the UBOS VM shows one adapter "enp0s3" but with no ip4 address:

    1: lo: ...
    2: enp0s3: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 ... qlen 1000
        link/ether 08:00:27:... brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
        inet6 fe80::.../64 scope link
           valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

I appreciate your help this far. Any further ideas?

I just tried on the most recent yellow, and it works fine for me. Check your virtualbox setup according to their manual — I forgot whether there was any Virtualbox magic incantation one had to do to get this to work. And of course, check your DHCP server that it actually hands out an IP address to the virtual mac address of your virtual machine. Otherwise, I don’t know.

[Julian Foad]

Johannes Ernst wrote:

VirtualBox networking can be confusing. I don’t think this is a UBOS issue. https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/UserManual.html has a bunch of info on it.

Thanks for the pointer.
 

I just tried on the most recent yellow, and it works fine for me. Check your virtualbox setup according to their manual — I forgot whether there was any Virtualbox magic incantation one had to do to get this to work. And of course, check your DHCP server that it actually hands out an IP address to the virtual mac address of your virtual machine. Otherwise, I don’t know.

Thanks for checking. I'm afraid that sounds too complex for me to attempt at the moment. I'll try one of the other installation methods when I have another day to spare.

- Julian

[Julian Foad]

Oh... now it works!

This morning, I booted this VM again, in Bridged networking mode, and it came up with an IP address on my LAN... and I can ping it from outside. I installed Wordpress and can access it from a web browser on the host PC via the new IP address. (mDNS isn't working yet, but never mind, that can come later.)

One thing that's changed since yesterday is the host PC has been docked (thus connected to wired Ethernet) all day. Maybe that has made the difference. Yesterday I was on wifi when I started all this testing, and when I plugged into the dock later on it continued to not-work.

Woo-hoo!

[Julian Foad]

Julian Foad wrote:

(mDNS isn't working yet, but never mind, that can come later.)

It iworks, but there was a documentation bug:
https://github.com/uboslinux/ubos-docs/issues/47

[Julian Foad]

I have solved the "bridged adapter" problem on wifi, and it was a simple configuration setting.

In the VirtualBox network settings screen, after the field where we select "Bridged", the next field is labeled "Name" and defaults to "eth0". It hadn't occurred to me that I would have to choose a particular adapter on the host system, and I assumed that field specified a name to be assigned to the adapter on the guest system. Not so. Today I noticed a pop-up hint which says it selects which adapter the bridge connects to on the host system, as shown in the attached screen shot.

By leaving the "Name" field set as "eth0", the bridging had been working only when my laptop was docked. By changing it to "wlan0" it now works on wifi.

I'll submit a tiny update to the documentation to mention that:
    https://github.com/uboslinux/ubos-docs/pull/48