virtualbox.org

Hello! I post this new topic because of the lack of responses in my older post (Debian 5.0 guest unsupported by Vbox Adds), I don't know If I am misunderstanding myself about the topic or the title but my problem is that my Debian Guest is very slow... the performance of the graphic interface is very slow and choppy; the windows takes time to show correctly, the menus work choppy, and when using whatever the two browsers that Debian Guest have as default (Iceweasel and Epiphany), none of them can render a video from you tube, the two frezees when trying to render a Video from you tube, the terminal consoles takes a time to load... etc.

I upgraded the linux-headers and got some corrections to the present kernel in this guest and thanks of that I do not have the kernel failure anymore, but the performance is still slow.

I have installed the VBox additions and didn't help on the performance.

from a beginning I used 384 Megabytes of RAM, as the default configuration of the VM recommended and then I got it bigger at 512 but the things just didn't go better.


Is there something I doing wrong? This phenomena is because Vbox cant support 2D video acceleration on this guest??

Another observation; I tested this Debian Guest in a Windows 7 host, with defaults and the things works better than having Ubuntu as guest... why? It is not unfair that? you got to tell me...

the pertinent information: My guest is Debian Lenny 5.0 with linux kernel 2.6.26-2-686, my host Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 and Vbox is 3.2.4 r62467 and I will post the VM log.

Hummmm,

I don't have these problems with my Lenny (5.04). I do not have it on SATA yet because it caused me problems like kernel panics when installing using SATA. (host I/O cache was enabled)

If you decide to switch to IDE though you will need to change the grub menu list and switch the storage settings in the VM guest settings. Still better then reloading
Steps are below

• Open terminal and type su <enter> type your password <enter>
• cd to /boot/grub/ and type gedit menu.lst
• Manage your way to the bottom and find the boot list and change the sda1 to hda1 in both places.
• Shut down the guest and change the storage settings of the VM to IDE.
• Boot the guest and well there you have it.

Other than that I have no idea what you problem could be. With 512 MB RAM and 12 MB of VRAM my Lenny works almost like it was on metal.


Note: The OpenGL does not mean that VBox GAs are not compatible with Lenny, just that you will not have acceleration for things like Compiz, Etc. and 2D is only for Windows guests.

Hello! thanks Perryg for your answer!! but the only problem that I have is that my Lenny (5.0.5) is very slow, just that... I didn't had kernel panics, just kernel failures; the system boots ok and works ok but very slow, every time I booted the VM after the upgrades that I made to it... It just showed me message box with a penguin in my guest desktop (bottom right) that my system had a kernel failure and If I wish to report that to kerneloops and gave me four options; always, yes, no and never... but not so grave failures as a kernel panic. and yes I know that the 3D support is the only thing that does not work here because everything else works fine.

And I think that I don't have I/O cache enabled, because I didn't had kernel panics in the Guest... Being sincere I don't know what's the difference to have enabled or disabled the I/O cache in my host... sincerely I don't know.

Maybe this could be a bug...

Well the bug is the ext4 File system. If you are using the SATA controller and do not have the host I/O cache enabled it corrupts the drive. Nasty little thing that has been reported to the kernel people but not resolved yet. If you host is using the ext4 FS I would strongly suggest that you make sure that it is enabled as it caused me to reinstall an OS just this week.

Neither in my host and the guest I am using the ext4 system in any of my disk partitions, so I feel safe about that... I have read before that the ext4 and Reiser file systems are ones that you must have some care... but the curious thing is that I have the VM hard drive of my Debian Guest stored in one NTFS parition that I have... the bigger one; I have this parition in order to save there all my files and documents for the Interaction between the Ubuntu and Windows OSes that I have in my computer, I don't know if that is a possible cause of the slowness in my Debian Guest, it could be?

SicoBulo wrote:Debian Guest stored in one NTFS parition that I have... , I don't know if that is a possible cause of the slowness in my Debian Guest, it could be?

i don't have numbers on linux ntfs performance, but you may have a look at how much CPU is consumed while NTFS read/write: high CPU load caused by filesystem operation may influence guest performance on a host with low end single-core CPU

I think the problem is with the Debian guest itself because I am testing now an Ubuntu Guest and It is fast, also I have its VM hard drive in my NTFS partition.. and I don't see that the performance in Ubuntu depends on what File system I have its virtual hard drive stored and looking in the CPU consumption I don't see so high values...

Could it be possible that you have something configured wrong in the guest or maybe even that something got corrupt?
I have Lenny on IDE working fine and Squeeze on SATA working fine as well.

Sincelery I don't know... And well, Using palimpest I didn't found troubles in the filesystem where I have my virtual hard drives stored.. maybe something is wrongly configured in the guest... I will try to change the controlers in the guest.

Hello! well I changed the VM hrad drive controller form SATA to IDE and configured in the Guest the proper settings in menu.lst as Perryg instructed me beneath this topic, and well the thing didn't go better, it is same; Debian keeps slow... so, hope I can find a solution, Thanks!

Hy to all ....

I have the same issue

my host machine is a P3 with 2 gb of ram, integrated vga on mathebord, 1 NIC on matherboard , 1 NIC PCI, with Debian Squeeze

I installed on it 3 host :
IPCOP
WIndows2003
Debian Squeeze

the first two work perfectly and very fast, WIndows 2003 is very fast it's perfect, but Debian guest is very very slow (also if run alone), the evidence of that slow start to se from grub, it's needed 32 second to be able move in the grub menu. After the system start slowly (other 3 min) gnome is like impossible to use with a big lag response from commands.

Debian guest have the following resources usage:
CPU: 3.5-7% (while top command run)
MEM: 94MB /248

I cannot believe... a windows host is so fast and linux have this behavior ... addiction was only a little help, but there is something wrong

IPCOP have a grub time like a bolt... what's wrong...