driver VirtualBox (vboxdrv) is crap

[ludolph]

Hi VirtualBox guys, any relevant comment on this topic:

https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/10/6/317
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=n ... &px=OTk5Mw

???

[Perryg]

FUD and politics, sour grapes.
Nothing more.

[ludolph]

FUD and politics, sour grapes.
Nothing more.

Really???

[Perryg]

Did you read all the threads or just the first one?

[ludolph]

Of course I did...?!

And I still want to hear any relevant comment on this topic.

[mojeaix]

I would like your comments on this as well. I have seen inexplicable slowdowns and freezes of guests when using VirtualBox on Linux and Windows hosts. It is not enough to declare this as FUD and ignore it. A bit of transparency would be welcome.

As a virtualization platform, I like VirtualBox more than VMware and Hyper-V. I use it to run SBS 2011 and Windows Server 2008 in an Ubuntu 10.04 x64 production environment. I also use it heavily to run a variety of test operating systems on Windows 7 x64. With the exception of said slowdowns and freezes it is fine.

You guys are doing a great job! Thanks.

[Perryg]

All packages have issues and need to be continuously worked on. I have never seen a program that does not have issues period.
Searching the list that was suggested shows you the reported bugs and the solutions that were found. That said I will post links to the search for VirtualBox, VMware, & KVM on bugzilla and you can see for yourself that this appears to be more politics than actual facts.

VirtualBox ALL = 82
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/buglist.cgi ... virtualbox

VMware ALL = 423
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/buglist.cgi ... ent=vmware

Red Hat KVM ALL = 2771
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/buglist.cgi ... ontent=kvm

[mykrotek]

Let me start by saying that I have been a loyal VirtualBox user for many years. My experiences with it on Windows hosts have been great, with very few issues. It was with this trust in the solid behavior of VirtualBox that I decided to build a dedicated server for hosting all my VMs, using Ubuntu Server x64 on a fast I7 processor with 16GB of RAM. Since moving to a Linux host, I have had nothing but problems – host segfaults, host memory **and** disk corruptions, VM guests that become so corrupt that I have to rebuild them – I have posted on the forums a couple of times (but it seems my forum login went missing so now I can't find them) and received no feedback. I see other users on the forums complaining of similar issues, so I know I am not alone in experiencing these issues.

I have spent countless hours rebuilding the host and guests because of these problems. I have checked over the hardware several times, running diagnostics and burn-in tests for days. The host system runs flawlessly as long as no VMs are running. Each time I rebuild, I use the latest releases of the OS and VirtualBox, hoping that perhaps this time the problem is resolved. So far, the problems persist. So when I see that the Linux VirtualBox driver has been declared “crap”, I am inclined to believe it. Whenever I check the host's log files after a crash or corruption, it is something to do with VirtualBox. Even when the host is not visibly disturbed, my guest VM's are unstable (freezes, crashes) which was not an issue under Windows hosts.

It is frustrating to see a post from the moderator claiming in effect that the other guys have problems too, and posting counts of trouble tickets to compare the quality of the competing systems. These numbers don't just reflect the number of problems with the system, they also are influenced by the size of the installed base (I expect that the RedHat virtualization solution would be used more frequently on RedHat systems), the responsiveness of the support team, and the “buy-in” of the customers (If you have paid money for a product, you are more likely to demand fixes for any issues you encounter.) Also, quickly looking over those lists, it seems that VirtualBox has many entries referring to crashes, freezes, and segfaults, whereas the VMWare list seems to contain more issues with things “not working”.

And to bring up politics, one could make a case that Oracle is playing politics with VirtualBox, not dedicating it's resources to a project that is for the most part not a revenue stream for them. The “politics” card can be played many ways, it just depends on the point-of-view of the entity playing the cards.

As I write this, I am in the middle of completely rebuilding a Windows 7 x64 guest because it became hopelessly corrupted when the host crashed due to a memory corruption on the host that brought the entire system down. And now while installing it, the host reports an error trying to access a block beyond the end of the device while trying to rebuild the guest, another issue I experience with VirtualBox from time to time.

So instead of alienating users like myself by saying that “everyone has problems” and “it's just politics”, how about letting us know that you are committed to fixing the problems that have been noted as the reason for marking the driver as “crap”. I agree that everyone has problems, but some problems are worse than others, and for a virtualization solution, corrupting/crashing hosts and guests is about as bad as it gets. As mentioned before, I too would like to see more transparency, and would welcome a dedicated work group designed to collect information about these issues and use that information to get the driver stabilized again. This “crap” label is a black-eye for VirtualBox, but one that can be recovered from if Oracle/VirtualBox shows some resolve in dealing with the problem.

[Sasquatch]

So you all declare the kernel module to be junk and not working. Well, let me tell you, it's the best thing there is for a type-2 hypervisor on Linux. KVM is a type-1, so that doesn't count. Same goes for Xen. That just leaves VMware. Did you ever try to install VMWare on Linux? You have to practically rebuild the entire kernel to add some hacks that is required, else it won't work. And when your distro comes with a new kernel build, you have to go through all that trouble again. And did any of you ever check what issues there are with those requirements? And how it runs on Linux?

We've had several old VMware users here on Linux that were so relieved that VB didn't have all those issues and just worked. Keep in mind that if something doesn't work, you hear it from almost everyone that has issues with it, which is not more than 10% of the total userbase, usually even less.

[stefan.becker]

VBOX has a more rapid development cycle than VMWARE.

So there are often new versions and you dont see kernel problems if you use ever the newest version.

VMWARE has not so often new versions. So it tooks a long time, since a new version supports the newest kernel. In the meantime you must search VMTN for kernel patches. But you dont patch and rebuild the kernel. The vmware modules are patched and rebuilded.

In a company this is not a problem. There you use a professional distro like SLES or RHEL, and these dont have the newest kernels and are always supported from vmware.

For private / home users with new distros like OpenSuse or Ubuntu or Fedora VBOX is the easier solution.

[Virtualizer]

Almost 1 year virtualbox user, i7 sandybridge/16gb ram, fedora 14 + fedora 15 latest kernel, NVIDIA drivers.

Working currently with at least 3 windows xp sp3 guest simultaneously + 1 linux guest, sometimes 5-6 windows guests.

Last night I had some problems with networking configuration (bridge) I was thinking first that was a kernel problem, but soon after I start thinking that was virtualbox latest update problem (4.1.4) and searching for a solution I find the slashdot article with vbox kernel driver = crap.
So, I was thinking, there is it..start installing vmware. BTW, was no manual kernel re-compilation, install kit did all by himself like "vboxdrv setup".
Also doing a virtualbox forum account to complain about the networking problem.

Today, after I install 2 guest machines (windows xp sp3) on vmware , I figure it out that is not a kernel problem or virtualbox problem, just guest configuration.

But, I like vmware, seem that is having some video acceleration, keep one guest (winxp sp3) for testing and..here we are, problems start to pop up.
One nasty crash that I don't remember to have on virtualbox (yes, was some vmware video driver problem).
Sound card disabling itself time to time without any apparent reason.
VNC control instead of remote desktop (latest is faster and like it more).

But is too early to say something for sure about vmware, time will show what is capable of. And what is missing and what is doing wrong.

Overall, I can say that virtualbox is a pleasant experience. Not just because is free, just is.
Most of the problem I had, was because of the X server + kernel version - crashes when passing from text console to graphic mode on big system load & other rare and particular cases.
It would be nice to have the machine running even with graphical interface crashing, without having to use remote desktop.
And of course, some stable video acceleration will be nice, real-time prioritization of guests, less crashes when playing video content on guest or attaching some USB devices, etc. will be nice.
But with patience..

For now, I prefer to stick with VirtualBox, keep vmware for some more testing.

Again, VirtualBox overall is a good product. And being (almost) free, is great.

[Technologov]

In my opinion VBox's stability has improved during the past few years.

[flomow]

It was with this trust in the solid behavior of VirtualBox that I decided to build a dedicated server for hosting all my VMs, using Ubuntu Server x64 on a fast I7 processor with 16GB of RAM. Since moving to a Linux host, I have had nothing but problems – host segfaults, host memory **and** disk corruptions, VM guests that become so corrupt that I have to rebuild them – I have posted on the forums a couple of times (but it seems my forum login went missing so now I can't find them) and received no feedback. I see other users on the forums complaining of similar issues, so I know I am not alone in experiencing these issues.

Hey,
I had the same problems after switching to a linux host (ubuntu x64) from windows xp. The system freezed after a while, network crashed, etc.

After investigating for a while I found that virtualbox and ubuntu does not match on my server. So I installed CentOS 6 (which has an even better longterm support than Ubuntu) and voilá never had any problems, everything runs smooth and fine.
Maybe this could help you out, too!?

Best regards, flomow

[Lux0r]

I'm running VirtualBox on couple of production servers for years. Debian stable, Intel CPUs. There are some issues, but it's really stable, thanks god and devs.

[naemrr]

Let me start by saying that I have been a loyal Virtual Box user for many years. My experiences with it on Windows hosts have been great, with very few issues. It was with this trust in the solid behavior of Virtual Box that I decided to build a dedicated server for hosting all my VMs, using Ubuntu Server x64 on a fast I7 processor with 16GB of RAM. Since moving to a Linux host, I have had nothing but problems – host segfaults, host memory **and** disk corruptions, VM guests that become so corrupt that I have to rebuild them – I have posted on the forums a couple of times (but it seems my forum login went missing so now I can't find them) and received no feedback. I see other users on the forums complaining of similar issues, so I know I am not alone in experiencing these issues.

First i recommend making sure that whenever you update your Ubuntu's kernel you also check (daily if need be) for virtual box updates until one becomes available, i also recommend putting in the extension pack AND insuring that the virtual box guest addons and DKMS for Ubuntu guests is installed.

that being said, Virtual box and Ubuntu are both free, bugs are to be expected, and planned for, snapshots can be a lifesaver, performed weekly and rolled into each other monthly is my method, whenever a guest acts up for any reason I only loose at most 6 days of changes when I revert to last snapshot. if a system completely fubars on you reverting to a snapshot has you back up in less then a minute, as once a snapshot is made the vdi file for that virtual guest is no longer touched, all changes goto a separate file, so corruption of the base vdi wile not impossible, is more improbable.

Forgot to also add, DKMS should be installed on the host, as well as the build basics and Linux headers, as the issues you are seeing could be simply from the vbox driver not able to fully engage the kernel.