[OpenIndiana-discuss] How to downgrade virtualbox from latest version

[Harry Putnam]

Carl Brewer <carl at bl.echidna.id.au> writes:

> It's not, the problems are with the VirtualBox GUI, what happens
> inside the (I hate trying to work out how to describe GUI parts!) OS
> screen, is a symptom.
>
> I run a bunch of virtual servers in VirtualBox, the current GUI is
> misbehaving as Harry describes, but it's workable, and I'm not
> affected by the garbled text in the client screen, because I just SSH
> into them anyway.  None of my guests have the guest tools installed at
> all, because I'm not using the GUI I never bothered. I don't think it
> works on NetBSD 5 guests anyway :)

[...]

I'm glad to see your post on this.  confirms by original ideas only
much better forumlated and presented..  My post might not have made it
to the list since I had images attached ...

Does anyone know how long version:
  system/virtualbox 6.1.16-2020.0.1.0

Has been the virtualbox version on offer in our repos?

I ask because seeing the worst of the GUI problems only for a few
weeks, I thought maybe a recent version change had happened.

I ssh into my main VM quite a lot too so it may have been a while
since I've been on the gui, until now, but, I have been on other vms
along the way and had no serious trouble with them.

It's gotten so bad that today I could not even get latest oi/hipster
ISO installed into a vbox vm. Can't even get the initial boot of the
ISO to run far enough to install OI.

And it should be noted that I have used previous ISOs and installed
with no trouble.
-------       -------       ---=---       -------       -------

On an attempted boot from our latest oi ISO 202005 to test installing
a new OI vm
  
  [After getting thru the oi/hipster boot menu we start getting text
  lines on the boot up screen]:
  
  [...]
  
  Loading unix
  Loading /platform/i86pc/amd64/boot_archive . . .
  Loading /platform/i86pc/amd64/boot_archive.hash . . .
  Booting . . .
  WARNING: cpu0: failed to update microcode from version 0x60b to 0xa0b
  
  WARNING: cpu0: CPUID.0x0 returns invalid value:hw_low = 0. hw_high=0. xsave_si = 0, ymm_size
  = 0, ymm_offset = 0
  
  WARNING cpu1 failed to update microcode from version 0x60b to 0xa0b
  
  Notice: hma_vmx_init: CPU does not support VMX
-------       -------       ---=---       -------       -------

And there it freezes ... forever apparently: I waited about 10 minutes

You might think that line means this host (an HP xw8600) cannot run
Virtual Machines.  That would be wrong... over time it has run dozens
of VBox vms sometimes 5-6 at once.