VT-x status in BIOS is a red herring. Turns out modern Virtualbox won't
even start VM's without VT-x.
A true cause turned out to be "Windows Sandbox" feature (although I
imagine for some other users the problem might be triggered by "Windows
Subsystem for Linux" or anti-virus software).
Here is how to reproduce it in Windows 10:
1. Enable "Windows Sandbox" (Control panel -> Programs and Features -> Turn
Windows features on or off)
2. After restart run Ubuntu live ISO in virtualbox and notice that
a) VM slows to a crawl, some apps (firefox) start crashing randomly, etc
b) Virtualbox shows "green turtle" icon (third from the right on the lower
panel) which lists Execution engine as "native API" instead of "VT-x"
c) Running "apt update" produces error mentioning "hash mismatch"
d) Running workaround (mkdir -p /etc/gcrypt; echo intel-ssse3 >
/etc/gcrypt/hwf.deny) fixes the apt error
3. Disable "Windows Sandbox" feature
4. After Windows restart run Ubuntu in Virtualbox and be surprised by green
turtle still being there, all mentioned problems still present
5. Restart Windows second time, run Ubuntu in Virtualbox again, this time
there is a blue chip instead of green turtle and apt works without workarounds
Clearly it seems that gcrypt isnt at fault here and the true culprits
are Windows Sandbox (possibly some other mechanism that Windows Sandbox
enables) and/or Virtualbox. However the result is that new users are
getting wrong impression about GNU/Linux and Ubuntu in particular (it
appears slow and lags during "live" phase, fails to update after
install).
So I'd say Ubuntu should detect that it's being run in this broken
virtualization mode, show the informative explanation to user (that
their current experience isn't representative && how they can fix that)
or at least enable the workaround for gcrypt (although if SSSE3 is buggy
in this mode, I imagine more things are stealthily broken).
Surprisingly Ubuntu still finishes installation, even with default
"update from internet" option enabled. After installation, "apt update"
still produces the same "hash mismatch" errors though. Enabling
workaround and rerunning "apt update" predictably finds many more (292
right now) packages that are to be upgraded. This fail-open behavior
(installer and updater ignoring the errors) will no doubt lead to subtle
bug down the road for the users as well (I'd argue that it's a security
issue as well - users not being informed about security patches they're
missing).
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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1890006
Title:
Hash mismatch on "apt update"
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