VirtualBox 7.0.4
Please read the update at the bottom of this post before making any conclusions. I wanted to leave the rest of the post unedited, but needed to update my current situation as it has changed since this post was written…
VirtualBox 7.0.4 has been released.
The downloads and changelog are in the normal places.
From my previous posts on VirtualBox 7.0.x you will know I’ve been having problems with it. They all seem to come down to networking. I can often, but not always, start up an existing VM, but if I try to build a new VM with Vagrant it will fail to setup the networking. Also, if I attempt to use Packer, it will fail to find the kickstart file, which it attempts to access over HTTPS. Both cases seem to be network related.
I’ve done all the usual firewall and antivirus stuff, and trawled the internet to see if anyone else has a solution. None of that has helped.
When I saw VirtualBox 7.0.4 I was hoping this might solve my problem, but no. I get the same issues on Windows 11, Windows 10 and macOS (Intel). This makes VirtualBox 7.0.4 unusable for me.
When I revert back to VirtualBox 6.1.40, everything works as expected…
I don’t know if this is just me, or if a lot of people are having problems with VirtualBox. It seems odd that I am getting the same result on multiple machines on two fundamentally different architectures though.
So my current suggestion would be use this at your own risk…
Vagrant 2.3.3
Vagrant 2.3.3 has also been born. Upgrading to this didn’t cause or solve any issues for me. Even though I’ve had to revert back to VirtualBox 6.1.40, this new version of Vagrant is working fine for me.
Packer 1.8.4
At some point since my last run of Packer builds version 1.8.4 was released. This follows the same pattern. It works great with VirtualBox 6.1.40, but doesn’t work at all with VirtualBOx 7.0.x.
Conclusion
Sadly VirtualBox 7.0.x is still a bust for me. Maybe I’m the only one on the planet, but it is unusable for me. I hope this changes in the future as I rely on VirtualBox bigtime…
Cheers
Tim…
Update: I’ve now switched to using VirtualBox 7.0.4 completely, and all issues have been resolved. This post by Frits Hoogland explained what my problem was. This is solved by adding the “–nat-localhostreachable1” parameter. That solved my Packer problem, and subsequent VM problems. Happy days…
Update 2: An update from Simon Coter suggests the issue is due to the way Vagrant and Packer use the VirtualBox CLI, rather than the API. The workaround mentioned in the previous update is still the easiest way to move forward.