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Networking problems with VBox 4.0 and recent virtio driver

Posted: 14. Jan 2011, 11:04
by BrightIdea
After migrating from VBox 3.2.12 to 4.0, my paravirtualized network interfaces (at least in Windows Guests) stopeed working reliably. Light network usage (like pinging a host) works, but as soon as I'm trying to do anything useful over the network like copying files from a Windows Guest, the network in the guest stops working (disconnect).

The problem only occurs in the following combination of settings:
  • The problem only occurs with VirtualBox 4.0.0. Switching back to VirtualBox 3.2.12 solves the problem.
  • The problem only occurs when using a recent virtio network driver (either version following this Link). Using the older Qumranet virtio driver from here works fine.
  • The problem only occurs with a bridged connection to the host's network. Changing the NIC's attachment from bridged to NAT "solves" the problem.
My environment is as follows:
  • The host is running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid) AMD64 running on a Core2 Quad Q9400 CPU
  • The host is connected to a GBit ethernet with a Marvell 88E8001 Gigabit Ethernet Controller using the "skge" kernel module
  • VirtualBox is Version 4.0.0 with the VirtualBox 4.0 Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack installed
  • Windows guests experiencing the problem are fully patched Windows XP SP3 and Windows 7 (both 32bit)
Any idea what I could do to solve this?

Re: Networking problems with VBox 4.0 and recent virtio driver

Posted: 16. Jan 2011, 15:08
by Technologov
Please open bug report in bugzilla.

Re: Networking problems with VBox 4.0 and recent virtio driver

Posted: 20. Jan 2011, 17:50
by BrightIdea
Thanks for the link :-)

I'll retest with 4.0.2 and if it's not solved create a bug report.