Fed up of dying Solaris guests

[sandervl]

I've just fixed an old bug that affects 64 bits guests OSes on AMD machines. The symptoms were random crashes and hangs.

If some of you have seen this problem on Intel machines, then it's unrelated to the above fix.

[rasta]

sandervl,

That's great. Thank you.

Do you or others on the Vbox team have any news regarding fixes related to increasing the stability of 64-bit Solaris guests on 32-bit hosts (particularly Windows Intel hosts)?

[sandervl]

I've just fixed another bug that caused 64 bits Solaris guests to hang randomly (timing related if and when you'd see it). 3.0.6 will contain the bug fix.

This one could appear on all hosts and CPUs.

[SSCBrian]

I've just fixed another bug that caused 64 bits Solaris guests to hang randomly (timing related if and when you'd see it). 3.0.6 will contain the bug fix.

This one could appear on all hosts and CPUs.

Cool. I have recently had my 64-bit Solaris guest on 64-bit Vista hang. Has been quite stable up until that point. You guys are getting it done, one bug at a time!

[rasta]

Great! Thank you, Sander.

[rasta]

64-bit guests will not boot on 32-bit Windows hosts with 3.0.6. #4947

With 3.0.6, 32-bit Solaris 10 u7 guests on a 32-bit WinXP host will still hang (xorg/JDS), especially if >1 processor is selected with SMP. This is not the same type of hang as experienced before (#2258), as the processors are not pegged. Just slow death of the Xorg windowing system. This problem has been reported by myself previously. Guest and Vbox GUI must be restarted to get back to stable behavior.

For all intents and purposes, SMP is not supported on 32-bit hosts for Solaris guests.

[sej7278]

64-bit guests will not boot on 32-bit Windows hosts with 3.0.6. #4947

With 3.0.6, 32-bit Solaris 10 u7 guests on a 32-bit WinXP host will still hang (xorg/JDS), especially if >1 processor is selected with SMP. This is not the same type of hang as experienced before (#2258), as the processors are not pegged. Just slow death of the Xorg windowing system. This problem has been reported by myself previously. Guest and Vbox GUI must be restarted to get back to stable behavior.

For all intents and purposes, SMP is not supported on 32-bit hosts for Solaris guests.

your problem is using a 64-bit guest on a 32-bit host, not smp; it seems to be a bug in 3.0.6, there's plenty of posts about it - apparently it worked in 3.0.4

i'd say ditch 32-bit host os, especially as you have a 64-bit cpu with vt-x.

64-bit linux host works fine for me.

[giorgio42]

I am running osol snv_123 on Vista 64 bit on a core i7 920 CPU. Whenever I set the number of CPUs in the guest to more than 1, OpenSolaris starts to reboot randomly (could not finish a hg clone of netbeans sources).

Regards
Georg

[SSCBrian]

I am running osol snv_123 on Vista 64 bit on a core i7 920 CPU. Whenever I set the number of CPUs in the guest to more than 1, OpenSolaris starts to reboot randomly (could not finish a hg clone of netbeans sources).

Yeah, I'm going to just have to say "don't do that" Multi-processor support continues to improve, but it's still not ready for primetime. Fun to experiment with, but I don't use it on any of my important VMs. Looking forward to trying out 3.0.8 to see if it's better there!

[rasta]

Vbox 3.0.8 is COMPLETELY HOSED for Solaris 64-bit guests on 32-bit WinXP hosts. 1 processor used for guest, VT-X enabled. Boot is fine, but logging in takes over 2 minutes, and guest and host windowing systems are slow, unresponsive, and completely unusable. I can barely type this message from host, the windowing system is so slow. With no user processes running on guest, java processes retain constant 1-5% cpu load, as in bug #4411. Back to the drawing board, gentlemen. Networking seems ok, as it was in 3.0.6.

I'll test a 32-bit guest soon.

[rasta]

3.0.8 Solaris guest additions were installed.

[rasta]

32-bit guests are also completely hosed. See bug #5140.

[rasta]

Disabling guest audio support is the only way I have found to get my Solaris guests to behave normally. With no audio, even 64-bit Solaris guests appear to behave quite well so far on my WinXP 32-bit host with VT-x.

[rasta]

I found that Solaris guests will run normally when audio support is enabled for guest if the "Sounds for events" JDS desktop pref is disabled. However, JDS logins are much slower than in previous version of vbox if the Solaris JDS sound server is enabled.

[rasta]

Although the problem I described above is very severe, with vbox 3.0.8 I see no evidence of the hanging of Solaris guests to which this thread mainly pertains. Therefore, I suggest that we end this thread and start others as needed.