DEFT 6 and VirtualBox: Maybe it’s just me?

 

Just a quick-post.

Recently, the DEFT gang released DEFT Linux 6.  This is the next iteration of the DEFT LiveCD for forensics work.

(I’m continuing to make notes for my promised write-up of Xplico and was hoping to work with the latest LiveCD which includes the updated version of Xplico as well for my post, anyway…)

For some reason, when I downloaded the ISO file and attempted to boot it in the latest 4.0 version releases of VirtualBox on my Windows 7, x64 (Home Premium) system, I only got a black screen.

I checked the MD5 for the ISO and it matched perfectly.  The “burned” CD of the same ISO file would work just fine to boot a physical system…so I was at a loss as to why it wouldn’t work in VirtualBox.

I had allocated 1024MB for the virtual machine, and bumped the video RAM allocated up to 16 MB.

Nothing.

My host system is a Dell Studio 15 (1558) with 4GB RAM and an i7 processor.  Should be able to handle things.

For kicks I tried booting my DEFT 5.1 ISO in the same “ISO Loader” VirutalBox machine and had no issues.  It loaded and ran just fine.  Back to using the DEFT 6 ISO file and nothing.

After a couple of days pondering things, I decided to try disabling “VT-x/AMD-V” & “Nested Paging” under the “Acceleration” tab just for kicks n grins.

Guess what?

The DEFT 6 ISO now loaded and was executed just fine by VirtualBox.

Probably just an issue with my particular host system but just in case anyone else is scratching their head getting a non-boot of the DEFT 6 ISO in VirtualBox, it might not hurt to try.

I can enable those settings on other virtual machines in VirtualBox and don’t have any issues so maybe it’s just DEFT 6 specific…

Cheers…

Claus V.