#37 Asking for vbox:IVirtualBox_getVersion generates error 500

[m4r1k]

Hey there,

I'm recently playing a bit with RemoteBox, and wow great tool.

As part of my testing, I've installed Vbox on a Solaris 11.3 x86 machine, and every few minutes I get a very annoying error message.

Through I notice that this issue happens when RemoteBox ask for the Vbox version. Follows the pcap.

Would be nice if you could fix it :-)

Thanks!

19:31:07.844978 68:f7:28:db:0e:e4 > 0c:c4:7a:22:b7:2e, ethertype IPv4 (0x0800), length 899: 192.168.178.130.49238 > 192.168.178.236.18083: Flags [P.], seq 1:834, ack 1, win 229, options [nop,nop,TS val 2103178007 ecr 351409], length 833
E..uC.@.@............VF..6..C7S............
}[.....POST / HTTP/1.1
TE: deflate,gzip;q=0.3
Connection: TE, close
Accept: text/xml
Accept: multipart/*
Accept: application/soap
Host: 192.168.178.236:18083
User-Agent: SOAP::Lite/Perl/1.26
Content-Length: 563
Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8
SOAPAction: ""

<soap:envelope soap:encodingstyle="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:interface="urn:vbox" xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:soapenc="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:vbox="http://www.virtualbox.org/" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"><soap:body><vbox:ivirtualbox_getversion><_this xsi:type="xsd:string">d5c45f801c206943-0000000000000001</_this></vbox:ivirtualbox_getversion></soap:body></soap:envelope>
19:31:07.845002 0c:c4:7a:22:b7:2e > 68:f7:28:db:0e:e4, ethertype IPv4 (0x0800), length 66: 192.168.178.236.18083 > 192.168.178.130.49238: Flags [.], ack 834, win 33304, options [nop,nop,TS val 351409 ecr 2103178007], length 0
E..4..@.@...........F..VC7S..6.............
...}[..
19:31:07.845251 0c:c4:7a:22:b7:2e > 68:f7:28:db:0e:e4, ethertype IPv4 (0x0800), length 882: 192.168.178.236.18083 > 192.168.178.130.49238: Flags [P.], seq 1:817, ack 834, win 33304, options [nop,nop,TS val 351409 ecr 2103178007], length 816
E..d..@.@...........F..VC7S..6.............
...}[..HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error
Server: gSOAP/2.8
Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 680
Connection: close

<soap-env:envelope xmlns:soap-env="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:soap-enc="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:vbox="http://www.virtualbox.org/"><soap-env:body><soap-env:fault><faultcode>SOAP-ENV:Client</faultcode><faultstring>VirtualBox error: Invalid managed object reference "d5c45f801c206943-0000000000000001"</faultstring><detail><vbox:invalidobjectfault><badobjectid>d5c45f801c206943-0000000000000001</badobjectid></vbox:invalidobjectfault></detail></soap-env:fault></soap-env:body></soap-env:envelope>

[m4r1k]

A bit more of details.
When I get 500 error from the VBOX webserver RemoteBox just crashes. If I recover the session, anyways, the connection is broken. Even more, if I was editing a VM, I need to restart the remote webserver.

I reproced the issue also on a Fedora 27 VBOX server.
Attaching a Curl content to reproduce the issue as well as error from the GUI.

[m4r1k]

curl -X POST -v -d @PostCURL.txt http://<vbox server="">:18083</vbox>

[m4r1k]

Lastly also the PCAP file that you can open through Wireshark

I hope all this helps identifying and fixing the issue

[m4r1k]

Tested on 2.5 same issue there as well

[Ian Chapman]

For the moment, you may find the following work-around helpful. In RemoteBox, got ro File -> RemoteBox Preferences and uncheck "Enable Heartbeat" and then press Save. This might improve things for you.

I've been unable to reproduce the issue myself so far, but Error 500 indicates a probable server side problem. Further more, having to restart the web service also indicates this. RemoteBox will "wait" for the server to respond and it will appear as if it's hung. Can you provide me the following info?

Version of Virtualbox running on your solaris x86 server? Is this package from VirtualBox website?
Which OS are you using RemoteBox on?
Do you get the error also when you initially login to virtualbox with RemoteBox?

[m4r1k]

Hi Ian,

I'm very sorry for my late reply.
I've re-done some testing on a fresh environment and I've discovered that without rebooting the OS, vboxweb just random gives back a 500. Debug log is all clean before and when it happens. Restarting all the vbox services doesn't fix it.

I believe something during the installation needs to be better managed but ... hey that's not up to us.

One last one, still on Solaris, you may want to add to your documentation that the auth doesn't work unless you remove the pam_dial_auth.so.1 module from /etc/pam.d/login otherwise one can also disable auth on the vboxweb (VBoxManage setproperty websrvauthlibrary null) but as you already suggested it's not reccomanded.

More details at the following link about pam_dial_auth.so.1 (it's quite a generic issue)

https://forums.openvpn.net/viewtopic.php?t=12633#p29239

/usr/gnu/bin/sed -e "s/^auth required.*pam_dial_auth.so.1$/# auth required pam_dial_auth.so.1/g" -i /etc/pam.d/login

Cheers and Thanks for your support!

[Ian Chapman]

Thanks m4r1k. Just to confirm, you're saying that after installing on Solaris, a reboot "fixes" the http 500 error? If that's the case, that's probably why I haven't been able to repoduce it and I'll add something to the FAQ. Also, thanks for the information regarding PAM on Solaris, very useful. I'll update the Solaris information accordingly.

[Ian Chapman]

I've just done some testing, this is with VB 5.2.10 installed on Solaris x86 11.3. Authentication works as expected, even with pam_dial_auth.o.1 specified in /etc/pam.d/login. So it suggest to me that the issue is perhaps more complex than the PAM module alone. I'll still update the documentation with the additional info however as it may be useful for others.