1 Topic by CosmicAnteater (edited by CosmicAnteater 2013-03-12 20:47:41)

  • CosmicAnteater
  • New member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2013-03-12
  • Posts: 2

Topic: GParted in Virtualbox issue with video drivers: no screens found

I'm trying to boot GParted live 0.14.1-6 within Oracle Virtualbox 4.2.6 r82870 (Extension Pack installed).

The host OS is Windows 7, the physical graphic card is an AMD Radeon HD 6900. The physical CPU is an AMD Phenom II X6 1100T.

I created a VM in order to test the latest ArchLinux release in Virtualbox with the following settings:

  • 1024 MB RAM

  • 8 GB Disk (VDI)

  • EFI enabled

  • Video Memory: 128 MB

  • Monitor count: 1

I chose my GParted iso (gparted-live-0.14.1-6-amd64.iso) with the "Add virtual CD/DVD disk file" feature (attached to the virtual IDE controller).

Gparted live CD/iso boot correctly, I select the default option "GParted live default settings" in the GRUB menu (GRUB 1.99-23.1), set the keyboard layout and preferred language. When it comes to the video mode choice, I tried all the following options:

(0) Continue to start X to use GParted automatically
(1) Run 'Force video' to config X manually: I tried this option with 1024x768 & 800x600 resolution, either with default vesa driver and ATI (24 bit color depth).

All those choices lead to the same error, GParted gets stuck at this point:

Fatal server error:
no screens found

server terminated with error (1).
xinit: giving up
xinit: unable to connect to X server: Connection refused
xinit: server error
...

Help would be appreciated

2 Reply by gedakc

  • gedakc
  • Developer
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2007-11-30
  • Posts: 4,593

Re: GParted in Virtualbox issue with video drivers: no screens found

The GParted Live Manual (see documentation page) contains some tips when there are problems booting GParted Live.

Before going through these tips, you might want to try the latest GParted-Live-0.15.0-beta1-1 in the testing branch.  This version contains updated code from upstream Debian Live and might address your situation.

3 Reply by CosmicAnteater

  • CosmicAnteater
  • New member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2013-03-12
  • Posts: 2

Re: GParted in Virtualbox issue with video drivers: no screens found

Thanks for your feedback. I tried the various tips provided in the GParted Live documentation. Nothing worked:

  • Safe graphic settings, vga=normal

  • Failsafe mode

  • Modify screen resolution, driver or color depth

  • Use advised kernel parameters in the booting splash screen

  • Use the GParted-Live-0.15.0-beta1-1 ".iso" and test this release against the previous settings

Nevertheless, when I disable the "Enable EFI" setting for my VM in Virtualbox, the GParted ".iso" boot normally and the graphical environment seems to works properly.
Is there some issue with the EFI support in Virtualbox? Or in GParted...

For the moment I can't figure out.

4 Reply by gedakc

  • gedakc
  • Developer
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2007-11-30
  • Posts: 4,593

Re: GParted in Virtualbox issue with video drivers: no screens found

Thanks for the tip about GParted being able to boot in Virtual Box with "Enable EFI" setting disabled.  At least you can now boot GParted.

As to the root cause, that is still a mystery.  Can you boot any of the recent Debian Live images?

GParted is based on Debian Live.  If Debian Live works, then perhaps we need a more recent version.

5 Reply by stevenshiau

  • stevenshiau
  • Member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2008-04-02
  • Posts: 293

Re: GParted in Virtualbox issue with video drivers: no screens found

Yes, I confirmed this issue for GParted live 0.14.1-6 on Virtualbox 4.2.x.
However, I can boot the same version of GParted live into X on VMware WS 9.0.2 EFI machine. Therefore apparently the graphic card in uEFI mode of Virtualbox is not supported by the X driver.
I believe we will have to wait for the future updated driver to support that.

Steven.