I have not used Gazebo recently, but when I tried to today, it does not work. I can run standalone gazebo just fine, as well as `roscore & rosrun gazebo_ros gazebo`.
`roslaunch gazebo_ros empty_world.launch` produces the following output:
... logging to /home/josh/.ros/log/b0f1f296-25d9-11e7-ac6a-0800273acdef/roslaunch-josh-VirtualBox-3366.log
Checking log directory for disk usage. This may take awhile.
Press Ctrl-C to interrupt
Done checking log file disk usage. Usage is <1GB.
started roslaunch server http://josh-VirtualBox:38854/
SUMMARY
========
PARAMETERS
* /rosdistro: jade
* /rosversion: 1.11.21
* /use_sim_time: True
NODES
/
gazebo (gazebo_ros/gzserver)
gazebo_gui (gazebo_ros/gzclient)
auto-starting new master
process[master]: started with pid [3378]
ROS_MASTER_URI=http://localhost:11311
setting /run_id to b0f1f296-25d9-11e7-ac6a-0800273acdef
process[rosout-1]: started with pid [3391]
started core service [/rosout]
process[gazebo-2]: started with pid [3395]
process[gazebo_gui-3]: started with pid [3412]
[gazebo-2] process has died [pid 3395, exit code 255, cmd /opt/ros/jade/lib/gazebo_ros/gzserver -e ode worlds/empty.world __name:=gazebo __log:=/home/josh/.ros/log/b0f1f296-25d9-11e7-ac6a-0800273acdef/gazebo-2.log].
log file: /home/josh/.ros/log/b0f1f296-25d9-11e7-ac6a-0800273acdef/gazebo-2*.log
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