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

Update1: No log file for Gazebo is written. In the log folder, there is only master.log, roslaunch-josh-VirtualBox-29107.log, rosout.log, and rosout-1-stdout.log.

Update2: Results from roslaunch gazebo_ros empty_world.launch debug:=true.

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Reading symbols from gzserver...(no debugging symbols found)...done.
[tcsetpgrp failed in terminal_inferior: Inappropriate ioctl for device]
[tcsetpgrp failed in terminal_inferior: Inappropriate ioctl for device]
[tcsetpgrp failed in terminal_inferior: Inappropriate ioctl for device]
[Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]
Using host libthread_db library "/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libthread_db.so.1".
[tcsetpgrp failed in terminal_inferior: Inappropriate ioctl for device]
[New Thread 0x7fffd7443700 (LWP 18134)]
[tcsetpgrp failed in terminal_inferior: Inappropriate ioctl for device]
[tcsetpgrp failed in terminal_inferior: Inappropriate ioctl for device]
[tcsetpgrp failed in terminal_inferior: Inappropriate ioctl for device]
[tcsetpgrp failed in terminal_inferior: Inappropriate ioctl for device]
[tcsetpgrp failed in terminal_inferior: Inappropriate ioctl for device]
[tcsetpgrp failed in terminal_inferior: Inappropriate ioctl for device]
[tcsetpgrp failed in terminal_inferior: Inappropriate ioctl for device]
[tcsetpgrp failed in terminal_inferior: Inappropriate ioctl for device]
[New Thread 0x7fffd2cfb700 (LWP 18141)]
[Thread 0x7fffd2cfb700 (LWP 18141) exited]
[Thread 0x7fffd7443700 (LWP 18134) exited]
[Inferior 1 (process 18112) exited with code 0377]
(gdb)