virtualbox.org

clouddev wrote:All Linux VMs I've tried have exhibited this behavior (Kubuntu 14,16,18 and Fedora 2x)

<Image uuid="{afddceae-24e8-4f9a-962c-9aa48a932535}"
        location="/Users/yan/Downloads/Fedora-KDE-Live-x86_64-29-1.2.iso"/>

Are all your VMs KDE based? That's pretty much the only difference I could see between your VM and mine. That, and the "Host I/O Cache" being enabled in mine, but that shouldn't matter too much, if any.

I'm going to try and I can replicate your "experience" with the KDE DVD. In the mean time, can you try a Gnome one and see what you get?

Yes - all the VMs I've tried have been KDE based. I'll try a Gnome distribution and report back. Thanks

This finally worked for me after weeks of trouble shooting! Apparently, you need to turn off Beam Synchronization for running Yosemite or later on the guest. The sole purpose of the app BeamOff is to turn off Beam Synchronization to make a VirtualBox running Yosemite or later work better.

Download the beamoff app (this is my first post, so apparently I'm not allowed to post links, sorry!) in the VM, then run it in the VM. You want it to load on login, so go to System Preferences > Users & Groups > Login Items > then hit + and browse for where beamoff is located. On start up, the icon will appear in the dock, bounce a few times while it turns off beam sync, then close itself.


Host: Macbook Pro 2015 running Catalina
Guest: Mac Yosemite 10.10
Guest Setup: 1 vCPU, 4096 base memory, 25G storage, video mem 128Mb, EFI enabled, boot order: optical, hard disk, acceleration default, display scale 200%, VboxVGA, 3D acceleration.
Guest Additions 6.04 installed, then .dmg ejected

Note that I'm only running Circus Ponies Notebook as a lab notebook (why won't someone make a new electronic lab notebook that works this well?) on my VM, so not very intensive. My scrolling is still laggy, but mouse and display generally run much better!

So normally I'd hate to pile on this thread, but I'm experiencing a very similar issue and have tried to recreate the steps the user used to mitigate some of the issues without success. My situation is a little different, but since so many of the parameters are similar this seems like a good spot to lay things out.

Host Environment

• iMac 27 2017
  Mojave 10.14.6
  4.2Ghz Quad Core
  40GB RAM
  Radeon Pro 580 8GB
  Version 6.0.18 r136238 (Qt5.6.3)
  VBox Extensions Version 6.0.18 r136238
  VM on an external 2.5" SATA SSD with USB3.1 UASP interface

Guest Environment

• Ubuntu 18.04.4 with latest GA CD installed
  4 vCPUs allocated (I normally run 3/8 but thought this might help)
  16GB RAM allocated
  128MB Video Mem
  1024x768 REs with 3X scalefactor (for testing)
  VMSVGA w/3D Accel on (Tried other two as well)
  I've tried both Gnome and Unity within Ubuntu with little impact

Everything ran really well under VBox 5.X but I needed to upgrade to Mojave and upgraded to VBox 6.0. I'm getting very slow performance < 5fps. The machine seems to run 25% to 150% CPU utilization in Activity monitor just sitting on the desktop. It doesn't seem to just be the UI, the entire system seems sluggish, to a point where it's almost unusable. On a side note the ejecting the GA iso from my VM causes virtualbox to quit about 25% of the time with 6.0. I tried the beamoff approach with no luck.

I've included my dump in the hope that it will be useful.

Hi,
I see that there are some reports of sluggish performance of Mac OS 10.14 running on the same OS, I attach a zip containing my iMac system report and VB's log of the last boot.
Hopefully someone can point me to the cause of the problem. The problem worsens when the window is switched to 200% unscaled output, the mouse pointer jerks around. I also tried to disable all the whistles and bells (transparencies and so on) without visible improvements.

Thank you
Flavio

Jumping in to give a huge +1 on this issue. I think the problem is how Virtualbox deals with the active display's resolution. On my 1080p monitor, my Linux VM runs perfectly. On my hi-res monitor, it runs ok, but shows inhibitive signs of lag that is especially bad when scrolling through a file in Intellij. On my laptop's retina display, the VM is nearly unusable.

I checked back on this thread today and glad to see I was not the only person having issues. It’s a shame that vbox appears to have so many issues running on a Mac OS host.

I returned the 2017 MacBook to model but have just purchased the new MacBook Air with an i7 and 16GB ram. I presume I’ll have the same issues here running Linux VMs?

Can anyone recommend an alternative software to run Linux VMs on macOS?

exharris wrote:I presume I’ll have the same issues here running Linux VMs?

Only way to know is to try.

exharris wrote:Can anyone recommend an alternative software to run Linux VMs on macOS?

Not here, officially. Google might help.

Refer to this thread for the solution:

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=90446

The problem is not on your end, you are not crazy, your GPU and CPU have plenty of power to do this properly, this bug is unacceptable, and there is a somewhat tolerable workaround.

I know it is a bit late to chime in here, but hoping it might help someone.
I have a Mac Pro running Catalina 10.15.6 with 32GB RAM and 8-core procs and Intel UHD 630 graphics. My display is native 2880 x 1800.

I had a couple VirtualBox (6.1.12) VMs running Windows and both were very responsive. I often us an external monitor that has a lower native resolution, but lately I have run the VMs on the native laptop display. I chose to scale to 200% to get a lower resolution in the VM so I could better see things. It was this scaling that killed performance. I had a YouTube video that played and it took me mins to get enough response to be able to even pause the video so I could kill the browser. Simpler tasks such as working within a windows app were also very sluggish and the mouse was erratic or non responsive. I adjusted scaling to 150% and it was a bit better, but still terrible. I started my second VM with no scaling (while the problem VM was on) and it ran very fast. After setting scaling back to native 100% they run fine. There is a major issue with scaling not working effectively.

Thanks for the feedback. When changing the scaling from 200% to 100%, did or didn't you enlarge the VM window?

I did not resize the VM window, just adjusted the scaling

Well, than your findings are expected. The performance depends more on the absolute number of pixels used on your host display, than on the resolution set in the guest.

So the performance should be terrible then if I use scaling?

Of course, terrible performance is never desired. Let me elaborate what I meant with an easy to calculate example:

A: Resolution 1920 x 1080, scale factor 100 % -> 2M pixels
B: Resolution 1920 x 1080, scale factor 200 % -> 8M pixels
C: Resolution 3840 x 2160, scale factor 100 % -> 8M pixels

B uses as many pixels as C on the host's display, and my educated guess is that performance wise, B is closer to C than to A. And I understood that you went from B to A (using your own resolution, of course).