Gnome Boxes on Fedora 33 fails to open - fedora

Question

I attempt to load gnome-boxes from the terminal (I'm running Fedora 33) and get the following error
$ gnome-boxes
(gnome-boxes:3194): Gtk-WARNING **: 12:34:57.343: GtkFlowBox with a model will ignore sort and filter functions
(gnome-boxes:3194): Gtk-WARNING **: 12:34:57.344: GtkListBox with a model will ignore sort and filter functions
(gnome-boxes:3194): Boxes-WARNING **: 12:34:57.904: libvirt-machine.vala:83: Failed to disable 3D Acceleration
(gnome-boxes:3194): Boxes-WARNING **: 12:34:57.913: libvirt-broker.vala:70: Failed to update domain 'fedora33-wor-2': Failed to set domain configuration: XML error: Invalid PCI address 0000:04:00.0. slot must be >= 1
(gnome-boxes:3194): Boxes-CRITICAL **: 12:34:57.916: boxes_vm_importer_get_source_media: assertion 'self != NULL' failed
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
My system:
$uname -a
Linux localhost.localdomain 5.9.16-200.fc33.x86_64 #1 SMP Mon Dec 21 14:08:22 UTC 2020 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
I don't whether it's related but I recently updated from kernel 5.9.11 directly to 5.9.16 (haven't used the PC in question for some weeks) and before gnome-boxes was working as normal.
Please advise how I can restore gnome-boxes - I have some virtual machines that I need to access...

Answer 1

I faced this issue when I force stopped Gnome-Boxes while cloning a VM.
Deleting the conflicting VM will resolve your issue(in your case 'fedora33-wor-2').
To delete the VM in fedora, install "libvirt-client" which provides "virsh" using the command
dnf install libvirt-client
then double check the available VM's using
virsh list --all
Delete the VM using command,
virsh undefine VM_Name

Answer 2

#channel-fun solved the problem of staring up gnome-boxes.
But the real problem is in cloning procedure. The XML describing the new machine is malformed.
virt-clone --original fedora33-ser --auto-clone
works properly.

Answer 3

I know this is an old thread, but I had the same problem recently.
I shut down gnome boxes whilst it was cloning a vm, and shutdown the machine.
I then couldn't open boxes, as it would just crash.
I was able to delete the VM itself, and then deleted the XML file associated with it.
To delete the VM itself, go to :
$HOME/.var/app/org.gnome.Boxes/data/gnome-boxes/images (which in my case is a symbolic link to a data drive)
and delete the VM with the name that you were cloning to (or safer, just move it somewhere).
To delete the XML file associated with it:
$HOME/.var/app/org.gnome.Boxes/config/libvirt/qemu/
and delete (or safer move) the file that is named VM_NAME.xml.
Then boxes should open ok, at least it worked for me.

Answer 4

Extending on Channel Fun's answer for Ubuntu repos the package is libvirt-clients (note the plural s):
sudo apt install libvirt-clients
Check the available VM's using:
virsh list --all
Delete the VM using:
virsh undefine VM_Name
If you receive the error:
error: Refusing to undefine while domain managed save image exists
Then you can explicitly remove that also using the --managed-save flag:
virsh undefine VM_Name --managed-save