Bug#901778: gnome-shell: blank screen after "OpenGL Warning: vboxCall failed with VBox status code VERR_BUFFER_OVERFLOW" on VirtualBox

[Simon McVittie]

Control: reassign -1 virtualbox-guest-dkms 5.2.12-dfsg-3
Control: affects -1 gnome-shell

On Tue, 19 Jun 2018 at 09:26:42 +0000, GHANNADZADEH Saman wrote:
> Jun 18 10:22:26 debian org.gnome.Shell.desktop[789]: OpenGL Warning:
> vboxCall failed with VBox status code VERR_BUFFER_OVERFLOW
> 
> You are also correct that gnome-shell is not crashing, but instead
> doesn't render anything. I can see and control the mouse cursor.
> 
> This is with the latest version of the VirtualBox (5.2.12r122591). I
> have tried this with both the virtual CD image from VirtualBox itself,
> and from the virtualbox-guest-dkms package (5.2.12-dfsg-3 from sid, as
> the testing version has a bug that prevents the kernel module from being
> compiled). I have also tried this with versions 4.16.0-2 and 4.15.0-3
> of the kernel. I get the above OpenGL warning in all cases.
> 
> If I disable 3D acceleration in VirtualBox and uninstall all
> VirtualBox-related guest additions, this problem goes away and GNOME
> loads as normal (but with a tiny resolution and without multi-monitor
> support out of the box).

I think this is probably a VirtualBox bug (either in the
virtualbox-guest-dkms kernel module, some user-space driver component,
or the host side), which gnome-shell is unlikely to be able to fix.

My employer uses VirtualBox for some projects and we've never had good
experiences with its 3D acceleration: our standard advice is to leave it
switched off.

    smcv