Dear community,

recently joined QuChemPedIA@home and immediately experienced some issues with running the following task:
- od9_athome_b3lyp-321gd,batch85,000857421,nwchem,1581802374

Computer stats:
- GenuineIntel Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4278U CPU @ 2.60GHz [x86 Family 6 Model 69 Stepping 1]
- Dual core
- INTEL Iris (1536MB) OpenCL: 1.2
- Darwin 19.4.0
- BOINC v 7.16.6
- 8 GB RAM
- newest version of VirtualBox installed together with the extension pack


This is what the task overview yielded:

<core_client_version>7.16.6</core_client_version>
<![CDATA[
<stderr_txt>
2020-05-16 13:06:02 (62392): vboxwrapper (7.7.26199): starting
2020-05-16 13:06:03 (62392): Feature: Checkpoint interval offset (292 seconds)
2020-05-16 13:06:03 (62392): Feature: Enabling trickle-ups (Interval: 1800.000000)
2020-05-16 13:06:03 (62392): Detected: VirtualBox VboxManage Interface (Version: 6.1.8)
2020-05-16 13:06:03 (62392): Detected: Sandbox Configuration Enabled
2020-05-16 13:06:03 (62392): Detected: Minimum checkpoint interval (600.000000 seconds)
2020-05-16 13:06:03 (62392): Create VM. (boinc_ca3ab7032117fd5e, slot#9)
2020-05-16 13:06:04 (62392): Setting Memory Size for VM. (1900MB)
2020-05-16 13:06:04 (62392): Setting CPU Count for VM. (1)
2020-05-16 13:06:04 (62392): Setting Chipset Options for VM.
2020-05-16 13:06:04 (62392): Setting Boot Options for VM.
2020-05-16 13:06:04 (62392): Setting Network Configuration for NAT.
2020-05-16 13:06:04 (62392): Disabling VM Network Access.
2020-05-16 13:06:05 (62392): Disabling USB Support for VM.
2020-05-16 13:06:05 (62392): Disabling COM Port Support for VM.
2020-05-16 13:06:05 (62392): Disabling Audio Support for VM.
2020-05-16 13:06:05 (62392): Disabling Clipboard Support for VM.
2020-05-16 13:06:05 (62392): Disabling Drag and Drop Support for VM.
2020-05-16 13:06:05 (62392): Adding storage controller(s) to VM.
2020-05-16 13:06:05 (62392): Adding virtual disk drive to VM. (vm_image.vdi)
2020-05-16 13:06:05 (62392): Adding VirtualBox Guest Additions to VM.
2020-05-16 13:06:06 (62392): Adding network bandwidth throttle group to VM. (Defaulting to 1024GB)
2020-05-16 13:06:06 (62392): Enabling shared directory for VM.
2020-05-16 13:06:06 (62392): Starting VM. (boinc_ca3ab7032117fd5e, slot#9)
2020-05-16 13:06:08 (62392): Successfully started VM. (PID = '62456')
2020-05-16 13:06:08 (62392): Reporting VM Process ID to BOINC.
2020-05-16 13:06:08 (62392): Guest Log: BIOS: VirtualBox 6.1.8
2020-05-16 13:06:08 (62392): Guest Log: CPUID EDX: 0x178bfbff
2020-05-16 13:06:08 (62392): Guest Log: BIOS: ata0-0: PCHS=16383/16/63 LCHS=1024/255/63
2020-05-16 13:06:09 (62392): VM state change detected. (old = 'poweroff', new = 'running')
2020-05-16 13:06:09 (62392): Preference change detected
2020-05-16 13:06:09 (62392): Setting CPU throttle for VM. (66%)
2020-05-16 13:06:09 (62392): Setting checkpoint interval to 600 seconds. (Higher value of (Preference: 180 seconds) or (Vbox_job.xml: 600 seconds))
2020-05-16 13:06:10 (62392): Guest Log: BIOS: Boot : bseqnr=1, bootseq=0032
2020-05-16 13:06:10 (62392): Guest Log: BIOS: Booting from Hard Disk...
2020-05-16 13:06:14 (62392): Guest Log: BIOS: KBD: unsupported int 16h function 03
2020-05-16 13:06:14 (62392): Guest Log: BIOS: AX=0305 BX=0000 CX=0000 DX=0000
2020-05-16 13:06:15 (62392): VM state change detected. (old = 'running', new = 'paused')
2020-05-16 13:06:26 (62392): VM state change detected. (old = 'paused', new = 'running')
2020-05-16 13:06:29 (62392): Guest Log: vgdrvHeartbeatInit: Setting up heartbeat to trigger every 2000 milliseconds
2020-05-16 13:06:29 (62392): Guest Log: vboxguest: misc device minor 59, IRQ 20, I/O port d020, MMIO at 00000000f0400000 (size 0x400000)
2020-05-16 13:06:50 (62392): Guest Log: vboxsf: g_fHostFeatures=0x8000000f g_fSfFeatures=0x1 g_uSfLastFunction=29
2020-05-16 13:07:06 (62392): VM state change detected. (old = 'running', new = 'paused')
2020-05-16 13:07:28 (62392): VM state change detected. (old = 'paused', new = 'running')
2020-05-16 13:07:33 (62392): Status Report: virtualbox/vboxheadless is no longer running.
2020-05-16 13:07:33 (62392): VM is no longer is a running state. It is in 'poweroff'.
2020-05-16 13:07:33 (62392): VM state change detected. (old = 'running', new = 'poweroff')
2020-05-16 13:07:33 (62392): Powering off VM.
2020-05-16 13:07:33 (62392): Deregistering VM. (boinc_ca3ab7032117fd5e, slot#9)
2020-05-16 13:07:33 (62392): Removing network bandwidth throttle group from VM.
2020-05-16 13:07:33 (62392): Removing storage controller(s) from VM.
2020-05-16 13:07:33 (62392): Removing VM from VirtualBox.
2020-05-16 13:07:33 (62392): Removing virtual disk drive from VirtualBox.
2020-05-16 13:07:39 (62392): Virtual machine exited.
13:07:39 (62392): called boinc_finish(0)

</stderr_txt>
]]>



Can you point me in the direction of what's causing this issue? Any help is much appreciated. Pls let me know if you need any more information to answer this question.

Thx

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Further information : it seems that your computer has this identifier number :2226

It will be easier for an eventual helper to look at this issue.

Hi.
I'm running Darwin 18.6 and vbox 5.2.26 on a 2014 Mac Mini which seems quite similar to your machine.
QuChemPedIA is doing fine on that setup.
You might encounter trouble because of vbox.
Not all versions are playing nicely with Boinc - even if it is not clear why.
You may want to try another version of it - I can recommend the one above.

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Greetings, Jens

Thanks Jens for the quick response! Installed the aforementioned version of Virtual Box yesterday but it seems it didn't work out again.

Sadly, I experienced similar issues across the board with all VM-based BOINC projects that I run. Starting out just a week ago, every single VM-based project seemed to work just fine, but somehow that changed after upgrading to the latest Virtual box version. (issues with Cosmology@Home, LHC@Home, QuChemPedIA@Home) Had some WUs successfully returned beforehand though. But now error messages are as numerous as tasks that failed such as
- Postponed: Communication with VM Hypervisor failed
- vsyscall attempted with vsyscall=none
- Postponed: VM Hypervisor failed to enter an online state in a timely fashion.

Just stumbled across the issue with BOINC-Virtual Box problems in the discussion forums of the respective projects. Seems that this is a rather common one that many other crunchers experience. I'll try various other versions of Virtual Box and hope that some version might work again.

Amongst others it was recommend to abort all currently running VM jobs on BOINC. Remove the project, close BOINC manager, install newest version of Virtual Box and reboot. Tried that but didn't work. Without too much of a technical background knowledge I basically already reached my limit here to further look for what is potentially causing this issue. Will try to troubleshoot more on the weekend, but if I don't get it to run stable by then, I'll give up on VM-based projects - at least for now.

Thanks again for pointing out this potential issue Jens!

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