OS/2 Warp, eComStation and ArcaOS bad performance as Guest

[martiniturbide]

Hello

I'm getting reports about OS/2 Warp 4.52, eComStation and ArcaOS having problems running in MacOS (Intel) Host.
- https://www.os2world.com/forum/index.ph ... 4#msg47164

They say that OS/2 (ArcaOS) is very slow or that it even traps. (boot error message).

I don't have a Mac, so I can test it myself, but I was wondering if any of you are experincing problems with VBox 7.1.6 (Mac Host) running the different OS/2 versions as a guest.

Regards

(There are some OS/2 OVAs on Archive.org if you want to try)

[granada29]

I downloaded OS2-Warp-4.5 from the archive, installed and ran it using the settings installed by the OVA file.

I am using a 2017 iMac running macOS 15.3 (Sequoia) with VirtualBox 7.1.6

I don't know anything about OS/2 but it seemed to boot and run OK. I think your best bet is to have one of your users send you a log of a slow session (zipped) and then maybe someone who knows more about OS/2 will be able to help.

[DavidRMac]

Hi

I recently posted on the OS2 World Forum the issue with the slowness in VirtualBox 7 when using ArcaOS on an Intel Mac, and Martin helpfully raised this issue here. I've been doing some experiments this morning and I can provide a log file.

Any help you can provide would be much appreciated. I think something is not working quite right here.

The main issue for me is that VirtualBox 6 on macOS Monterey was able to run ArcaOS very well. But VirtualBox 7 on macOS Sonoma and Sequoia runs the same VM, or even a fresh install, very slowly in comparison. I believe this may have to do with an Apple-mandated change in the later OS versions to force VirtualBox to use Apple's inbuilt hypervisor framework rather than it's own? But I'm guessing.

If this is the case, do you know if VMWare has been forced to do the same? I ask because it seems that ArcaOS is running much more quickly when using VMWare 13 on Sonoma and Sequoia than when using VirtualBox 7.

I have attached a log file - ArcaOS-Exp-2025-02-13-12-24-17.log.zip - in case this can help. This covers the time period for booting the VM until a Desktop is reached.

Some things I have noticed that may help:

1) The performance at low resolutions (800x600) is ok. Increasing the resolution makes it slower. It becomes noticeably slower at 1280x1024, and hard to use at 1920x1080. 65536 colours seems to be less slow that 16M colours.

2) Text scrolling at a command prompt in a window is slow, scrolling in a full-screen command prompt is less slow.

3) In VirtualBox 7 if I run the ArcaOS built-in cpuspeed.exe, it shows wildly varying values from 2400 to 3500MHz (my system is a 3.2 GHz 6-code Intel Core i7). If I do the same in VMWare I get a rock-solid 3192 MHz reported. This does not seem to vary. If I run the same on VirtualBox 6 (on a 1.2 GHz dual-core Intel Core m5) I get a consistent 1200 MHz reported. (I cannot install VirtualBox 7 on this machine since it won't run the required OS, and I can't install VirtualBox 6 on the other machine since it won't run in the OS version there.)

4) The cpuspeed numbers reported by VirtualBox 7 are higher when I run them in full screen commmand prompt sesssions than in windowed (graphics mode) command prompt sessions.

5) The cpuspeed figures are closer to the expected full speed value when the resolution is lower.

I'm using the latest VirtualBox 7.1.6 and the 7.1.6 Extensions Pack. I'm installing straight from the ArcaOS 5.0.8 install ISO and using the Virtual Box additions that are installed with that ISO.

The default (gengradd?) graphics driver are being used with VirtualBox 7 (also VirtualBox 6), whereas VMWare seems to default to using the Panorama ones. If I change to using the Panorama ones in VirtualBox 7, they work, but don't speed anything up from what I can tell.

I will include some screenshots of the results of cpuspeed.exe in separate posts below.

I can provide more logs and testing if that will help. It would be great to get to the bottom of this.

Thanks in advance

David

[DavidRMac]

VirtualBox 7 - slow at higher resolution:
- VirtualBox7.1.6-1920x1080x65536-Cropped.png
- VirtualBox7.1.6-1920x1080x65536-FullScreenPrompt.png

[DavidRMac]

VirtualBox 7 - okish at lower resolution:
- VirtualBox7.1.6-800x800x65536-Cropped.png
- VirtualBox7.1.6-800x800x65536-FullScreenPrompt.png

[DavidRMac]

VirtualBox 6 - works fine:
- VirtualBox6.1-1280x800x16M-Cropped.png
- VirtualBox6.1-1280x800x16M-FullScreenPrompt.png

[DavidRMac]

VMWare 13 - works fine:
- VMWare13.5.2-1600x1200-16M-Cropped.png
- VMWare13.5.2-1600x1200-16M-FullScreenPrompt.png

[granada29]

Not sure if it will help, but your Guest Additions are very old. Do things improve if you use the 7.1.6 additions?

Code: Select all

00:00:26.087971 VMMDev: Guest Additions information report: Version 6.1.32 r149290 '6.1.32'

[DavidRMac]

Hi granada29

You're right - I'm using the ones that come default with the ArcaOS installer. I was originally using the 7.1.6 ones, but was advised to reduce everything back to the defaults to see how it behaved.

So I have just reinstalled the 7.1.6 Additions and it behaves the same.

Please see attached log - ArcaOS-Exp-2025-02-13-18-04-14.log.zip.

Thanks

[granada29]

It's good to eliminate the Guest Adds as a cause.

My experience with other OS's is that the Apple Hypervisor does seem to perform much worse than the VirtualBox Hypervisor with Linux and Windows guests. Unfortunately the VirtualBox software requires macOS Monterey or earlier in order to use VirtualBox 6.1.x

I have no idea why VMWare behaves better than VirtualBox - I'm pretty sure that they too are using Apple's Hypervisor software on more recent releases of macOS. You could lodge a ticket in the Bugtracker to have your problem investigated by Oracle although I am not confident that it would be a very high priority for the developers.

[DavidRMac]

Thanks. I will probably lodge a ticket. I doubt if it will get much attention because it is such a niche OS, but then again it may be causing problems for other OSes too. I suspect things are optimised so that the popular OSes work fine, but such is life ...

[DavidRMac]

I just lodged the following ticket in the bug tracker:

https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/22384