VBox 5.0.10 crash issues with our Hands-On-Lab

I’ve ran two Hands-On-Workshops with customers and partners in Italy last week in Milano where we used our well known and thousands-of-times proven Hand-On-Lab environment:

• Download Link:
  Hands-On-Lab “Upgrade, Migrate & Consolidate to Oracle Database 12c”

But this time some people failed while running the lab with random corruptions either shutting down the entire VM while running – or displaying file corruptions in the spfile – or other issues.

The common thing in all cases: People had VBox 5.0.10 downloaded and installed right before the workshop.

Of course they’ve did it – as I’m tempted too since weeks. Every time I start VBox on my PC Oracle Virtual Box asks me:

Even though the screenshot is German you know what it offers me:
Download and Install Virtual Box 5.0.10.

Actually the current issue reminds me a lot on what I have experienced in 2014 in an Upgrade Hands-On Workshop in Vienna, Austria. 20 Oracle partners came together for two days for a Hands-On Upgrade/Migrate/Consolidate training. And 6 or 7 had random issues with their Virtual Box images. Corruptions. Failing upgrades at random phases. No patterns.

Only until somebody figured out via a Google search that at the same time other people started reporting similar behavior with their own VBox images using the brand new version of Virtual Box. It turned out that this newest version of Oracle Virtual Box 4.3 (I think it was 26) had exactly such issues. Everybody else in our room – including myself – running a version a few weeks older had no issues at all.

When we exchanged the affected installations the next morning replacing it (if I remember correctly: 4.3.24) all went fine for the rest of the workshop.

I won’t say that VBox 5.0.10 is bad as I lack evidence, reproducible test cases, bugs. 

But I follow other people’s Twitter and Facebook messages. And it seems to be that the PERL problem I did report a few days back:

is not he only issue with VBox images build in version 4 – and now running (more or less) on VBox 5.0.10.

Please see also:

• https://blogs.oracle.com/virtualization/entry/oracle_vm_virtualbox_5_07
• https://blogs.oracle.com/virtualization/entry/oracle_vm_virtualbox_5_011
• Issues with Oracle PERL causing segmentation faults:
  http://laurent-leturgez.com/2015/05/26/oracle-12c-vmware-fusion-and-the-perl-binarys-segmentation-fault
• Issues with the ParaVirtualization feature in VBox 5.0:
  https://patrickhurley.wordpress.com/2015/11/30/freeze-of-oracle-dbca-and-startup-nomount-running-on-linux-on-virtualbox-5/
• Oracle Virtual Box – Old Builds (4.3 etc)
  https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Download_Old_Builds_4_3

–Mike