SSH session becomes unresponsive when logged into Ubuntu Server virtual machine using VirtualBox
- by nickbart
Hi everyone,
I'm really at my wits end here, so I'm hoping someone here can help me. I have a virtual machine running Ubuntu Server 9.10. It's just a small development environment so I can keep my code separate from the test and production environments. I am running it through VirtualBox 3.1.6 on a laptop running Ubuntu Desktop 9.10. I have it set up with a bridged network connection and it is bridged to my laptop's wireless adapter. We have no wired connections in this office.
I boot up the VM and everything is fine. I can SSH into it using gnome-terminal and for a while everything is Kosher. Then seemingly randomly, the SSH terminal session with hang. No error message, nothing; it just becomes unresponsive. If I go to the VirtualBox terminal I find the VM itself is perfectly fine. It can ping and I can SSH out with it. If I restart the networking on the VM the SSH session in my gnome-terminal will most of the time become responsive again.
Here's an interesting point, the SSH session will sometimes die right in the middle of me typing something (this points to it not being an idle session issue) and if I go to the VirtualBox terminal and restart the networking and then return to my gnome-terminal SSH session I find that it will come back to life and what I typed when the session hung originally will magically type itself in to the buffer. So, my input is getting stored somewhere and just can't make its way to the VM until the networking on the VM is restarted.
I've tried different versions of VirtualBox and used vmdk images and vdi images and nothing seems to work. I can't tell if the problem is with my laptop, VirtualBox, or the Ubuntu Server VDI. Is there anyway to debug this issue? Or has anyone out there seen anything similar?
Your help is much appreciated.
Nick
