virtualbox.org

Hi,

I'm running a Windows 7 installation _in_ a virtualbox system:
- 2048MB, 1Proc, VT-x/AMD-V, Nested Paging, PAE/NX, Hyper-V

On the Win7 installation, there's a propriatary application running (a number of applications,
that emulates a specific network attached industrial complex).

When I'm running (starting up untill "stability point") the installation in the Windows 7 HOST - Virtual Box 5.2.22r126460 QT5.6.2
(a WIndows 7 Enterprise, 64bit, i5-3320M CPU@2.6GH - 8GB mem, Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500G),the installed system behaves "according to expectations".

The windows host windows CPU Usage remains around 34%, Memory Usage at 6.30 G. both belor w max.

However when running (as desired) in the MacOS El Capitan system - Virtual Box 5.2.22r126460 QT5.6.3
- Macbook Pro (late 2011), 2.8GHz i7
- upgraded mem 16GB mem 1333 DDR3
- upgrade HD 2TB SSD (Samsung EVO)

The (emulating) system behaves "short of expectations".

Since the application is proprietary, and undocumented,... I'm at a bit of a loss to the origin.
The emulation portions seems to behave as though certain (emulated) events do not happen "in time",
or are not detected at all,... thus, the emulation does not evolve in the right state.



What could be the origin for this difference in behaviour ?

Without VM logs any answer will be poor speculation. We'll need the log of the system which behaves incorrectly, and we'll need a better description of the problem than "short of expectations"!

To post a VM log file: With the VM fully shut down, right click and "Show Log" in the GUI, save "VBox.log" (no other file) to a zip, and attach the zip here.

Hereby
1. the VBOX log (gzipped). from the MacOSX Hosted vm-win7 run.

2. I already attempted to double the memory for the guest windows (on macos hosted environment) to 4G (instead of 2G), to no avail however.

3. the "short of expectations" description is more difficult.
The (collection of )applications, when running with Windows Host, communicate with each other (I presume),... and exchange messages,
emulating communication packages,...

The combination (and timing?) of these messages, result in, ... let's say after 5 minutes, the Window Hosted system to report the full
emulator to be completely started up (one of the applications has then a number of GREEN leds all lighted up).

In the "short of expectations" description,... this final phase (all system started up) is not reached,...
Presumably because some messages were not received or not received "in time". The final display on the MacOS hosted installation,
varies,... sometimes "some" green leds, sometimes all leds red, sometimes some leds yellow (typically they go from red to yellow to green).



Unfortunately the "emulated" system is only a "means to an end" (I'm programming communication software that must interact with the emulated system,... which is only representative when all "leds are green". (the emulator is considered a black box).



Could it be that the issue originates from something like a sepctre patch on Mac ? or am I looking completely in the wrong direction ?

VBox.log wrote: 00:00:01.947237 Guest OS type: 'Windows7'

That's a Win7-32bit template. It should be running fine with 2GB RAM. 4GB is the maximum it can use as it's 32bit Windows. Unnecessary I would think but I guess your host can afford it.

VBox.log wrote: 00:00:02.311855 [/Devices/lsilogicscsi/] (level 2)

Why did you put an LsiLogic SCSI controller on the VM? Why did you choose VMDK disk format? I'm assuming that the answer to both is that you didn't create this VM yourself. It looks like it was imported from VMWare. That can cause problems, as can all Windows hardware migrations.

VBox.log wrote: 00:00:02.311324 NumCPUs <integer> = 0x0000000000000002 (2)
...
00:00:02.638286 CPUM: Physical host cores: 2

This may be the biggie. You have allocated 100% of host CPU to the VM. VirtualBox is a host application, it can't run with 0% of CPU. Neither can the host. Sometimes you can get away with this if the VM is a light user of CPU, but the "simulator" part of the VM makes me suspect that will not be the case. You need to reduce this to 1 core and live with the lagginess that results when that 1 core is busy. At least it shouldn't stall.

VBox.log wrote: 00:00:02.312117 VRamSize <integer> = 0x0000000001c00000 (29 360 128, 28 MB)

That's not much graphics RAM for a modern GUI OS. I would up to 64MB.

Thank you mpack for the suggestions,...
and with excuses for the delay in answering, especially since you replied so swiftly. I was absent, and further occupied with other stuff.

Your assumptions are right,... I did not create the vm myself,
it had been created as vmware image (as copy from a real hardware system),
then exported to ova, which I imported.
Hence the hardware choices.

I tinkered around with some of the suggested settings, like set memory to 4G and 1 processor (to 100%),
and also attempted changing to IDE, and SATA controller, hoping one would be more efficient than the other (in windows).

the "biggy" was my mistake indeed, thinking - bc. virtual box reported a max of 4, that I had somehow 4 cores (instead of only 2).... and I thought 2 aught to be enough for the virtualisation.
now fixed that to 1 core 100% for image, remainder for remainder.

After these changes,... the simulator still does not perform

How about if you create a VM from scratch, with no luggage from the previous real system -> VMWare -> OVA -> VirtualBox? Just create a new, clean Win7 VM and install your custom software.

BTW, without getting into details (which I don't think you're allowed to), what does this thing do? Number crunching (CPU intensive)? 3D stuff (GPU intensive)? Hard disk benchmark (I/O intensive)? Network servicing (TCP/IP intensive)? All of the above?

And if you could include a log from the Win host, so that we can compare them, that could also help...