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Why a 32-bit guest under a 64-bit host and VB-2.0 install?

Posted: 9. Sep 2008, 18:43
by Penguin81
Why does a 32-bit Solaris 10 5/08 guest, install under a 64-bit Solaris 10 5/08 host and VirtualBox-2.0.0 install? I installed Solaris 10 5/08 on a Dell 755 with Intel Core2 CPUs, which boots into 64-bit mode. I installed the amd64 version of VB-2.0 and created a guest OS with VT-x enabled. But when the guest OS boots, it's in 32-bit mode.

I was trying to figure out how to force Solaris 10 to install or boot in 64-bit mode, but found that Solaris installs both kernels and picks the best one to use at boot time.

So, is there a way to tell what mode the VB environment is running in or some way to force guest OS installs to be in 64-bit mode?

Here's the system specs and OS information:

~~~~~~~~

Machine - Dell 755
Intel Core2 vPro 2 x 3GHz
4 GB RAM
160 GB HDD

~~~~~~~~

Host - Solaris 10 5/08

# psrinfo -vp
The physical processor has 2 virtual processors (0 1)
x86 (chipid 0x0 GenuineIntel family 6 model 23 step 6 clock 2992 MHz)
Intel(r) Core(tm)2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz
# isainfo -v
64-bit amd64 applications
cx16 mon sse3 sse2 sse fxsr mmx cmov amd_sysc cx8 tsc fpu
32-bit i386 applications
cx16 mon sse3 sse2 sse fxsr mmx cmov sep cx8 tsc fpu
# isainfo -k
amd64

~~~~~~~~~~

Guest - Solaris 10 5/08

# psrinfo -vp
The physical processor has 1 virtual processor (0)
x86 (GenuineIntel family 6 model 23 step 6 clock 2992 MHz)
Intel(r) Core(tm)2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz
#isainfo -v
32-bit i386 applications
sse2 sse fxsr mmx cmov sep cx8 tsc fpu
# isainfo -k
i386

Thanks for your time.

Posted: 9. Sep 2008, 19:54
by SSCBrian
Hardware virtualization & APIC must be turned on to activate 64-bit mode in Solaris. Did you remember to do that?

Posted: 10. Sep 2008, 16:22
by Penguin81
I did enable ACPI and VT-x/AMD-V, but not IO APIC when I created and installed the Solaris guest.

Unfortunately, the extensions were disabled in the BIOS and enabling those didn't fix the problem.

I had read elsewhere that the options would be uncheckable in VB if the BIOS didn't support them, but I guess that's not the case.

Just enabling the extensions in the BIOS and restarting the virtual machine did not cause Solaris 10 to boot in 64-bit mode. So, I decided to try a new install with all the extentions on and more RAM to make things faster.

I ran into a tangle creating a new machine because I had allocated 2048 MB of RAM to the machine and it was causing the installer to crash. I thought it was all of the extentions I turned on and had to enable and disable them one-by-one to figure out what was causing the crashes

In the end, a new install with ACPI, IO APCI, and VT-x/AMD-V enabled in both the BIOS and VB did not get Solaris to boot into 64-bit mode.

Any more suggestions? Thanks for your help.

Posted: 10. Sep 2008, 17:08
by TerryE
Please raise a problem ticket (See FAQ — Need to file a bug report?)

Posted: 10. Sep 2008, 17:41
by Penguin81
Done. Ticket #2196 opened with description and VBox.log attachment. Thanks.

Posted: 11. Sep 2008, 21:40
by Penguin81
64-bit problem solved.

Trusted Extensions was on in the BIOS, preventing anything new from using the hardware extensions. All I did was turn Trusted Extensions off and both Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris were able to run in 64-bit mode.

Thanks for all your help.

Posted: 12. Sep 2008, 01:35
by TerryE
Thanks for updating the ticket. This should be a documentation issue, but there is already a ticket on that.