[gentoo-user] A helping hand with virtual machines, please.

[gentoo-user] A helping hand with virtual machines, please.

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hi, Gentoo.

A friend of mine recently suggested I should install and play with
virtual machines on my Gentoo.

I've scanned /usr/portage for likely looking packages, particularly in
directory "virtual", yet found nothing likely looking.

Would somebody please give me some hints which packages I should be
looking at, and perhaps any use flags I might need.

TVM

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).

Re: [gentoo-user] A helping hand with virtual machines, please.

[Mark Knecht]

On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 11:20 AM, Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> wrote:
> Hi, Gentoo.
>
> A friend of mine recently suggested I should install and play with
> virtual machines on my Gentoo.
>
> I've scanned /usr/portage for likely looking packages, particularly in
> directory "virtual", yet found nothing likely looking.
>
> Would somebody please give me some hints which packages I should be
> looking at, and perhaps any use flags I might need.
>
> TVM
>
> --
> Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
>
>

The two biggies are VMware (closed source) and Virtualbox. (Open
Source) I use both but am slowly leaving VMware behind.

There are others I've never used like kvm, xen, qemu.

HTH,
Mark

Re: [gentoo-user] A helping hand with virtual machines, please.

[Michael Mol]

On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 2:20 PM, Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> wrote:
> Hi, Gentoo.
>
> A friend of mine recently suggested I should install and play with
> virtual machines on my Gentoo.
>
> I've scanned /usr/portage for likely looking packages, particularly in
> directory "virtual", yet found nothing likely looking.
>
> Would somebody please give me some hints which packages I should be
> looking at, and perhaps any use flags I might need.

I've heard you should stay away from virtualbox, due to instability
from their kernel modules.

Apart from that, make sure your kernel has kvm support enabled.

From there, you can either try playing with Xen (I've got my Gentoo
desktop as my dom0), libvirt, qemu-kvm or vmware-workstation. I
haven't tried any of the latter three on Gentoo, and I haven't tried
vmware on Linux at *all*.

I can't make a good recommendation for which would suit you best.
Perhaps someone else could make a suggestion or two.

-- 
:wq

Re: [gentoo-user] A helping hand with virtual machines, please.

[Felix Kuperjans]

Hi Alan,

Am 22.11.2011 20:20, schrieb Alan Mackenzie:
> Hi, Gentoo.
>
> A friend of mine recently suggested I should install and play with
> virtual machines on my Gentoo.
>
> I've scanned /usr/portage for likely looking packages, particularly in
> directory "virtual", yet found nothing likely looking.
Virtual machines are all in /usr/portage/app-emulation, not in virtual
(that is for virtual packages).
> Would somebody please give me some hints which packages I should be
> looking at, and perhaps any use flags I might need.
VirtualBox is quite easy for beginners, but requires external kernel
modules and requires a GUI (what you most probably want anyway).

KVM (maybe with virt-manager as a GUI) is quite powerful for desktop
virtualization, but requires processor support (but it is available on
all recent (Core2 oder newer) non-Atom CPUs by Intel and AFAIK all
recent AMD CPUs) and the kernel modules (but they are real upstream
modules and very stable).

Xen is the most advanced solution, but maybe not the best one to play
around. But it's supported by virt-manager, too.
>
> TVM
>

Re: [gentoo-user] A helping hand with virtual machines, please.

[Alan McKinnon]

On Tue, 22 Nov 2011 14:43:10 -0500
Michael Mol <mikemol@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 2:20 PM, Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> wrote:
> > Hi, Gentoo.
> >
> > A friend of mine recently suggested I should install and play with
> > virtual machines on my Gentoo.
> >
> > I've scanned /usr/portage for likely looking packages, particularly
> > in directory "virtual", yet found nothing likely looking.
> >
> > Would somebody please give me some hints which packages I should be
> > looking at, and perhaps any use flags I might need.
> 
> I've heard you should stay away from virtualbox, due to instability
> from their kernel modules.

I use virtualbox and it's the one I recommend.

The kernel modules are no better and no worse than any other
out-of-tree modules. Yes, they break sometimes. So does VMWare. So did
ath network cards long ago - that's how life works.

Here it runs on stable with zero issues about kernel versions for 6
months+, it's probably reasonable to assume that bleeding edge kernels
would of course not build occasionally. But does one really want to run
VMs on the latest bleeding edge kernel? I don't.

What I like about VBox is that you get all the useful bits in the
open-source version. With VMWare you get player for free but need
paying version to get more functionality.

It's been a long time since I payed with Xen so I can't really comment
on that product.

qemu-kvm would appeal to the hard-core geek, something that Alan Mac is
at least in part


> 
> Apart from that, make sure your kernel has kvm support enabled.
> 
> From there, you can either try playing with Xen (I've got my Gentoo
> desktop as my dom0), libvirt, qemu-kvm or vmware-workstation. I
> haven't tried any of the latter three on Gentoo, and I haven't tried
> vmware on Linux at *all*.
> 
> I can't make a good recommendation for which would suit you best.
> Perhaps someone else could make a suggestion or two.
> 



-- 
Alan McKinnnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] A helping hand with virtual machines, please.

[Albert W. Hopkins]

On Tue, 2011-11-22 at 19:20 +0000, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> Hi, Gentoo.
> 
> A friend of mine recently suggested I should install and play with
> virtual machines on my Gentoo.
> 
> I've scanned /usr/portage for likely looking packages, particularly in
> directory "virtual", yet found nothing likely looking.
> 
> Would somebody please give me some hints which packages I should be
> looking at, and perhaps any use flags I might need. 


They would be under app-emulation.  The "virtual" category is for
virtual packages (e.g. virtual/editor).

You could research Google for Linux visualization.  The big 3 open
source/semi-open-source are kvm, VirtualBox, and xen.  I have personal
experience with xen and kvm... and pretty much only use kvm now.

The big closed source one is VMware, but, except for legacy
requirements,  I personally don't know why people (still) use that when
the competing open source solutions are typically as good or better than
VMWare.

As for what USE flags, that would wildly depend on the visualization
package you choose (and a billion other ifs).  As always, required
dependencies are required by the packages themselves, forced USE flags
are forced by the packages themselves, anything else is our own personal
choice.

Re: [gentoo-user] A helping hand with virtual machines, please.

[kashani]

On 11/22/2011 11:20 AM, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> Hi, Gentoo.
>
> A friend of mine recently suggested I should install and play with
> virtual machines on my Gentoo.
>
> I've scanned /usr/portage for likely looking packages, particularly in
> directory "virtual", yet found nothing likely looking.
>
> Would somebody please give me some hints which packages I should be
> looking at, and perhaps any use flags I might need.
>
> TVM
>

+1 for VirtualBox and more importantly being able to use Vagrant with it.

http://vagrantup.com/docs/getting-started/index.html

kashani

Re: [gentoo-user] A helping hand with virtual machines, please.

[Alan McKinnon]

On Tue, 22 Nov 2011 21:14:15 +0100
Felix Kuperjans <felix@desaster-games.com> wrote:

> > Would somebody please give me some hints which packages I should be
> > looking at, and perhaps any use flags I might need.  
> VirtualBox is quite easy for beginners, but requires external kernel
> modules and requires a GUI (what you most probably want anyway).

That's not true.

VBoxHeadless implements practically everything you can do in the gui,
and the built-in RDP server lets you connect from other machines so the
host doesn't need to run a gui either.

A GUI is strongly recommended, some thing are just easier with
pointy-clicky, but it's far from required.

External kernel modules are no big deal either. You need the same with
VMWare. It's just a package you emerge and modules-rebuild is there to
help you remember what must be rebuilt with every kernel build. These
days you have to do the same with xorg-modules whenever you upgrade
Xorg, so even that is not an issue anymore.

-- 
Alan McKinnnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] A helping hand with virtual machines, please.

[Alan Mackenzie]

Good evening, Felix!

On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 09:14:15PM +0100, Felix Kuperjans wrote:
> Hi Alan,

> Am 22.11.2011 20:20, schrieb Alan Mackenzie:
> > Hi, Gentoo.

> > A friend of mine recently suggested I should install and play with
> > virtual machines on my Gentoo.

> > I've scanned /usr/portage for likely looking packages, particularly in
> > directory "virtual", yet found nothing likely looking.
> Virtual machines are all in /usr/portage/app-emulation, not in virtual
> (that is for virtual packages).
> > Would somebody please give me some hints which packages I should be
> > looking at, and perhaps any use flags I might need.
> VirtualBox is quite easy for beginners, but requires external kernel
> modules and requires a GUI (what you most probably want anyway).

> KVM (maybe with virt-manager as a GUI) is quite powerful for desktop
> virtualization, but requires processor support (but it is available on
> all recent (Core2 oder newer) non-Atom CPUs by Intel and AFAIK all
> recent AMD CPUs) and the kernel modules (but they are real upstream
> modules and very stable).

I'm kind of leaning towards KVM at the moment.  Just a quick question:
by "kernel modules" do you literally mean kernel modules?  It's just that
my kernel isn't built for modules (for simplicity's sake), so would that
mean me having to change this, or can I just build the stuff in?

> Xen is the most advanced solution, but maybe not the best one to play
> around. But it's supported by virt-manager, too.

> > TVM

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nürnberg).

Re: [gentoo-user] A helping hand with virtual machines, please.

[William Kenworthy]

On Tue, 2011-11-22 at 14:43 -0500, Michael Mol wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 2:20 PM, Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> wrote:
> > Hi, Gentoo.
> >
> > A friend of mine recently suggested I should install and play with
> > virtual machines on my Gentoo.
> >
> > I've scanned /usr/portage for likely looking packages, particularly in
> > directory "virtual", yet found nothing likely looking.
> >
> > Would somebody please give me some hints which packages I should be
> > looking at, and perhaps any use flags I might need.
> 
> I've heard you should stay away from virtualbox, due to instability
> from their kernel modules.
> 
> Apart from that, make sure your kernel has kvm support enabled.
> 
> From there, you can either try playing with Xen (I've got my Gentoo
> desktop as my dom0), libvirt, qemu-kvm or vmware-workstation. I
> haven't tried any of the latter three on Gentoo, and I haven't tried
> vmware on Linux at *all*.
> 
> I can't make a good recommendation for which would suit you best.
> Perhaps someone else could make a suggestion or two.
> 

YMMV ... VB is stable and rarely if ever breaks, app and modules "just
work" - performance is as good as vmware

vmware is a pig, you have to wait for matching kernel versions, the
licensing system sucks (I am not part of the IT staff, so because my
Institution centralises licensing, I have to get them to download it for
me every few months ... which means talking new helpdesk staff through a
process I cant participate in).  The upgrade process sucks ... you need
to use the vmware overlay as the tree version often just wont build
(usually requires different patches for every version).  Its tied to
having particular versions/modules/kernels and you have to actively
manage it which includes things like putting a copy in your own portage
overlay since the version you are licenced for gets punted from the
tree/overlay so you end up chasing ebuilds from the attic ...  It also
currently fails glsa-check for libpng as it requires an old png version
to build (this may be something unique to my system)

In use, vmware breaks regularly ... often requires waiting weeks before
patches/updates for kernels are out so its restore from a working backup
until upgrades are fixed.  VB doesnt need this.

As I said, YMMV but I am hoping to phase vmware out of my area.  I have
been using vmware since Version 1 but have no love for it.  

BillK

[gentoo-user] Re: A helping hand with virtual machines, please.

[Grant Edwards]

On 2011-11-22, Felix Kuperjans <felix@desaster-games.com> wrote:

> VirtualBox is quite easy for beginners, but requires external kernel
> modules and requires a GUI (what you most probably want anyway).

You can use VirtualBox entirely from the command-line if you want, but
all the HOWTO and Wiki pages you'll find all use the GUI.

I use VB to run Windows XP regularly (and OS-X a few times a year) and
it has always worked fine for me.

I also use Qemu, and it's pretty solid as well.

Never tried VMWare or Xen...

-- 
Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! ... I don't like FRANK
                                  at               SINATRA or his CHILDREN.
                              gmail.com            

Re: [gentoo-user] A helping hand with virtual machines, please.

[Neil Bothwick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 342 bytes --]

On Tue, 22 Nov 2011 22:29:23 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:

> What I like about VBox is that you get all the useful bits in the
> open-source version.

Except USB support.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

What do you get if you cross an agnostic, an insomniac and adyslexic?
Someone who lies awake at night wondering if there really is a dog.

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 198 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] A helping hand with virtual machines, please.

[Felix Kuperjans]

Am 22.11.2011 23:12, schrieb Alan Mackenzie:
> Good evening, Felix!
Good evening, Alan!
>
> On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 09:14:15PM +0100, Felix Kuperjans wrote:
>> Hi Alan,
>> Am 22.11.2011 20:20, schrieb Alan Mackenzie:
>>> Hi, Gentoo.
>>> A friend of mine recently suggested I should install and play with
>>> virtual machines on my Gentoo.
>>> I've scanned /usr/portage for likely looking packages, particularly in
>>> directory "virtual", yet found nothing likely looking.
>> Virtual machines are all in /usr/portage/app-emulation, not in virtual
>> (that is for virtual packages).
>>> Would somebody please give me some hints which packages I should be
>>> looking at, and perhaps any use flags I might need.
>> VirtualBox is quite easy for beginners, but requires external kernel
>> modules and requires a GUI (what you most probably want anyway).
>> KVM (maybe with virt-manager as a GUI) is quite powerful for desktop
>> virtualization, but requires processor support (but it is available on
>> all recent (Core2 oder newer) non-Atom CPUs by Intel and AFAIK all
>> recent AMD CPUs) and the kernel modules (but they are real upstream
>> modules and very stable).
> I'm kind of leaning towards KVM at the moment.  Just a quick question:
> by "kernel modules" do you literally mean kernel modules?  It's just that
> my kernel isn't built for modules (for simplicity's sake), so would that
> mean me having to change this, or can I just build the stuff in?
It can be built in as well. The necessary options are:
Virtualization -> Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) support

and then the corresponding processor support, i.e.:
KVM for Intel processors support
or
KVM for AMD processors support

That should be usually sufficient, the "Host kernel accelerator for
virtio net" can speed up your network but is not necessary.
>> Xen is the most advanced solution, but maybe not the best one to play
>> around. But it's supported by virt-manager, too.
>>> TVM

[gentoo-user] Re: A helping hand with virtual machines, please.

[Nicolas Sebrecht]

The 22/11/11, Alan McKinnon wrote:

> I use virtualbox and it's the one I recommend.
> 
> The kernel modules are no better and no worse than any other
> out-of-tree modules. 

You're wrong. Using the virtualbox module means you turn the kernel to
"tained crap" because of the number of problems it causes, including
random memory curruption.

-- 
Nicolas Sebrecht

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: A helping hand with virtual machines, please.

[Alan McKinnon]

On Wed, 23 Nov 2011 10:17:07 +0100
Nicolas Sebrecht <nsebrecht@piing.fr> wrote:

> The 22/11/11, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> 
> > I use virtualbox and it's the one I recommend.
> > 
> > The kernel modules are no better and no worse than any other
> > out-of-tree modules. 
> 
> You're wrong. Using the virtualbox module means you turn the kernel to
> "tained crap" because of the number of problems it causes, including
> random memory curruption.
> 


Care to back that up with something resembling evidence?

EVERY out-of-tree module will taint the kernel. As to whether it
deserves the "crap" moniker is a matter of opinion

-- 
Alan McKinnnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

[gentoo-user] Re: A helping hand with virtual machines, please.

[Nicolas Sebrecht]

The 23/11/11, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Nov 2011 10:17:07 +0100
> Nicolas Sebrecht <nsebrecht@piing.fr> wrote:

> > You're wrong. Using the virtualbox module means you turn the kernel to
> > "tained crap" because of the number of problems it causes, including
> > random memory curruption.
> 
> Care to back that up with something resembling evidence?
> 
> EVERY out-of-tree module will taint the kernel.

But not all virtualization solutions use out-of-tree module and from
those coming out-of-tree, few are taint as "crap".

>                                                 As to whether it
> deserves the "crap" moniker is a matter of opinion

...I'd rather say a matter of facts. :-)

Every one is free to support virtualbox but forgetting to talk about
this taint level is not very fair, FMPOV.

-- 
Nicolas Sebrecht

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: A helping hand with virtual machines, please.

[Joseph Davis]

I agree a list of issues, just broad ones, would be helpful.

I am interested in VMs, so knowing which ones have what problems,
and my own needs, would be help me make a good choice.

Please, disparage with details! ;-)

Thanks - Joseph

Nicolas Sebrecht wrote:
> The 23/11/11, Alan McKinnon wrote:
>> On Wed, 23 Nov 2011 10:17:07 +0100
>> Nicolas Sebrecht <nsebrecht@piing.fr> wrote:
> 
>>> You're wrong. Using the virtualbox module means you turn the kernel to
>>> "tained crap" because of the number of problems it causes, including
>>> random memory curruption.
>> Care to back that up with something resembling evidence?
>>
>> EVERY out-of-tree module will taint the kernel.
> 
> But not all virtualization solutions use out-of-tree module and from
> those coming out-of-tree, few are taint as "crap".
> 
>>                                                 As to whether it
>> deserves the "crap" moniker is a matter of opinion
> 
> ...I'd rather say a matter of facts. :-)
> 
> Every one is free to support virtualbox but forgetting to talk about
> this taint level is not very fair, FMPOV.
> 

-- 
University of Houston, Cougar Card services support.

Re: [gentoo-user] A helping hand with virtual machines, please.

[J. Roeleveld]

On Wed, November 23, 2011 12:06 am, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Nov 2011 22:29:23 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
>
>> What I like about VBox is that you get all the useful bits in the
>> open-source version.
>
> Except USB support.

Huh?

I used VirtualBox with a MSWindowsXP guest to use a "negatives" scanner
that would refuse to work with Sane as the device has some weird
initialization routines that need to be controlled by the actual driver.

The connection was with USB and worked perfectly.

I doubt USB support has disappeared suddenly.

--
Joost

[gentoo-user] Re: A helping hand with virtual machines, please.

[Nicolas Sebrecht]

The 23/11/11, Joseph Davis wrote:
> I agree a list of issues, just broad ones, would be helpful.
> 
> I am interested in VMs, so knowing which ones have what problems,
> and my own needs, would be help me make a good choice.
> 
> Please, disparage with details! ;-)

I've already said "random memory curruption". "random" is the key word
explaining why not much details can be given. :)

-- 
Nicolas Sebrecht

Re: [gentoo-user] A helping hand with virtual machines, please.

[J. Roeleveld]

On Tue, November 22, 2011 11:47 pm, William Kenworthy wrote:

<snipped>

> YMMV ... VB is stable and rarely if ever breaks, app and modules "just
> work" - performance is as good as vmware

I actually found VB to have better performance.

When using virtual machines, I tend to run multiple simultaneously.
VirtualBox can handle more on similar hardware the VMWare.
The settings for the VMs (harddisk size, memory size) are identical.
For video-settings, as they generally tend to run server applications, I
really don't care for those and the basic is generally sufficient.

--
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: A helping hand with virtual machines, please.

[J. Roeleveld]

On Wed, November 23, 2011 1:59 pm, Nicolas Sebrecht wrote:
> The 23/11/11, Joseph Davis wrote:
>> I agree a list of issues, just broad ones, would be helpful.
>>
>> I am interested in VMs, so knowing which ones have what problems,
>> and my own needs, would be help me make a good choice.
>>
>> Please, disparage with details! ;-)
>
> I've already said "random memory curruption". "random" is the key word
> explaining why not much details can be given. :)

I also got "random memory corruption" when compiling large packages with
simple kernel configurations and no "out-of-tree" modules present on the
system.

Do you have any evidence to proof that this randomness is actually caused
by VB modules and not something else?

--
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] A helping hand with virtual machines, please.

[Neil Bothwick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 717 bytes --]

On Wed, 23 Nov 2011 13:57:31 +0100, J. Roeleveld wrote:

> >> What I like about VBox is that you get all the useful bits in the
> >> open-source version.  
> >
> > Except USB support.  
> 
> Huh?
> 
> I used VirtualBox with a MSWindowsXP guest to use a "negatives" scanner
> that would refuse to work with Sane as the device has some weird
> initialization routines that need to be controlled by the actual driver.

Are you using the open source version, or the free-as-in-beer version?

USB support was not included in the open source version, try installing
app-emulation/virtualbox-ose and see for yourself.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Never ask a geek why, just nod your head and slowly back away

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 198 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: A helping hand with virtual machines, please.

[Mark Knecht]

On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 3:21 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Nov 2011 10:17:07 +0100
> Nicolas Sebrecht <nsebrecht@piing.fr> wrote:
>
>> The 22/11/11, Alan McKinnon wrote:
>>
>> > I use virtualbox and it's the one I recommend.
>> >
>> > The kernel modules are no better and no worse than any other
>> > out-of-tree modules.
>>
>> You're wrong. Using the virtualbox module means you turn the kernel to
>> "tained crap" because of the number of problems it causes, including
>> random memory curruption.
>>
>
>
> Care to back that up with something resembling evidence?
>
> EVERY out-of-tree module will taint the kernel. As to whether it
> deserves the "crap" moniker is a matter of opinion
>
> --
> Alan McKinnnon
> alan.mckinnon@gmail.com
>
>

Alan,
   I'm a happy Virtualbox user so I was surprised to see this post on
the LKML which I suspect pushed the consciousness of this a bit more
to the forefront:

https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/10/6/317

  Now, I have no problems with Virtualbox but I have no reason to
disbelieve these folks either. As with a lot of these things, it's the
devil you know or the devil you don't know. I suspect the other less
used solutions also have problems but not as many users, etc.

- Mark

Re: [gentoo-user] A helping hand with virtual machines, please.

[Marc Joliet]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1332 bytes --]

Am Wed, 23 Nov 2011 13:34:45 +0000
schrieb Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk>:

> On Wed, 23 Nov 2011 13:57:31 +0100, J. Roeleveld wrote:
> 
> > >> What I like about VBox is that you get all the useful bits in the
> > >> open-source version.  
> > >
> > > Except USB support.  
> > 
> > Huh?
> > 
> > I used VirtualBox with a MSWindowsXP guest to use a "negatives" scanner
> > that would refuse to work with Sane as the device has some weird
> > initialization routines that need to be controlled by the actual driver.
> 
> Are you using the open source version, or the free-as-in-beer version?
> 
> USB support was not included in the open source version, try installing
> app-emulation/virtualbox-ose and see for yourself.

USB*2* support is not included in the OSE version (but is available in the
oracle extension pack:
https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch01.html#intro-installing), while USB1 is
supported out of the box.

Also, since version 4, the package is now just called app-emulation/virtualbox,
so "open source edition" isn't quite correct anymore. Now they call it the "base
package". AFAIK, all the proprietary components were moved into the extension
pack.

-- 
Marc Joliet
--
"People who think they know everything really annoy those of us who know we
don't" - Bjarne Stroustrup

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 198 bytes --]

[gentoo-user] Re: A helping hand with virtual machines, please.

[Nicolas Sebrecht]

The 23/11/11, J. Roeleveld wrote:

> I also got "random memory corruption" when compiling large packages with
> simple kernel configurations and no "out-of-tree" modules present on the
> system.
> 
> Do you have any evidence to proof that this randomness is actually caused
> by VB modules and not something else?

This is a question you should ask to the kernel developers. You're free
to not trust them, of course. I'll still think they are at a much better
place than yours to tell which driver are crap and which are not.

-- 
Nicolas Sebrecht

Re: [gentoo-user] A helping hand with virtual machines, please.

[J. Roeleveld]

On Wed, November 23, 2011 2:34 pm, Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Nov 2011 13:57:31 +0100, J. Roeleveld wrote:
>
>> >> What I like about VBox is that you get all the useful bits in the
>> >> open-source version.
>> >
>> > Except USB support.
>>
>> Huh?
>>
>> I used VirtualBox with a MSWindowsXP guest to use a "negatives" scanner
>> that would refuse to work with Sane as the device has some weird
>> initialization routines that need to be controlled by the actual driver.
>
> Are you using the open source version, or the free-as-in-beer version?
>
> USB support was not included in the open source version, try installing
> app-emulation/virtualbox-ose and see for yourself.

Probably the free drinks version. But when also considering VMWare, I
doubt it would matter much.

--
Joost

[gentoo-user] Re: A helping hand with virtual machines, please.

[Grant Edwards]

On 2011-11-23, J. Roeleveld <joost@antarean.org> wrote:
> On Wed, November 23, 2011 12:06 am, Neil Bothwick wrote:
>> On Tue, 22 Nov 2011 22:29:23 +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
>>
>>> What I like about VBox is that you get all the useful bits in the
>>> open-source version.
>>
>> Except USB support.
>
> Huh?

The last time I checked, USB support is not available in the
open-source version of VB -- only in the binary-only version.

> I used VirtualBox with a MSWindowsXP guest to use a "negatives" scanner
> that would refuse to work with Sane as the device has some weird
> initialization routines that need to be controlled by the actual driver.
>
> The connection was with USB and worked perfectly.
>
> I doubt USB support has disappeared suddenly.

And you're using the open-source VB?

-- 
Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! I'll eat ANYTHING
                                  at               that's BRIGHT BLUE!!
                              gmail.com            

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: A helping hand with virtual machines, please.

[Alan McKinnon]

On Wed, 23 Nov 2011 05:51:19 -0800
Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 3:21 AM, Alan McKinnon
> <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Wed, 23 Nov 2011 10:17:07 +0100
> > Nicolas Sebrecht <nsebrecht@piing.fr> wrote:
> >
> >> The 22/11/11, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> >>
> >> > I use virtualbox and it's the one I recommend.
> >> >
> >> > The kernel modules are no better and no worse than any other
> >> > out-of-tree modules.
> >>
> >> You're wrong. Using the virtualbox module means you turn the
> >> kernel to "tained crap" because of the number of problems it
> >> causes, including random memory curruption.
> >>
> >
> >
> > Care to back that up with something resembling evidence?
> >
> > EVERY out-of-tree module will taint the kernel. As to whether it
> > deserves the "crap" moniker is a matter of opinion
> >
> > --
> > Alan McKinnnon
> > alan.mckinnon@gmail.com
> >
> >
> 
> Alan,
>    I'm a happy Virtualbox user so I was surprised to see this post on
> the LKML which I suspect pushed the consciousness of this a bit more
> to the forefront:
> 
> https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/10/6/317
> 
>   Now, I have no problems with Virtualbox but I have no reason to
> disbelieve these folks either. As with a lot of these things, it's the
> devil you know or the devil you don't know. I suspect the other less
> used solutions also have problems but not as many users, etc.
> 
> - Mark
> 

Mark,

I too am a happy VirtualBox user. I find it works better and is far more
stable than either VMWare or Nvidia drivers. Or Flash for that matter.

I also know the Linux kernel devs have incredibly high standards - mere
perfection is often just not good enough - a very good trait in a dev. I
put it down to a distinct lack of technical design not being driven by a
corporate Sales department :-)

Having said that, Dave's mail sounds a lot like me sounding off on a
good day after the Nth clueless user pissed me off one time too many -
he makes a startling claim and then proceeds to not back it up, but
just rant. 

Lets grant that the VirtualBox modules are not up to LKML standards.
That's fine, very little out of the tree is. I'm willing to bet that
the majority of the issues are silly bugs involving pointer arithmetic
(the usual cause of these things) and could be fixed up with minimal
effort.

Either way I don't think a sweeping condemnation of the entire product
is the right way to go.

Oh, I forgot something in the first paragraph. In my experience on this
machine we can add Firefox, OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice to the same
list of unstable software.

-- 
Alan McKinnnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] A helping hand with virtual machines, please.

[Alan McKinnon]

On Wed, 23 Nov 2011 14:01:34 +0100
"J. Roeleveld" <joost@antarean.org> wrote:

> On Tue, November 22, 2011 11:47 pm, William Kenworthy wrote:
> 
> <snipped>
> 
> > YMMV ... VB is stable and rarely if ever breaks, app and modules
> > "just work" - performance is as good as vmware
> 
> I actually found VB to have better performance.
> 
> When using virtual machines, I tend to run multiple simultaneously.
> VirtualBox can handle more on similar hardware the VMWare.
> The settings for the VMs (harddisk size, memory size) are identical.
> For video-settings, as they generally tend to run server
> applications, I really don't care for those and the basic is
> generally sufficient.


I notice this entire thread has carefully steered around ESXi

Now there's an interesting product, with a truly fascinating licensing
and pricing model.



-- 
Alan McKinnnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: A helping hand with virtual machines, please.

[Michael Mol]

On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 10:09 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> Lets grant that the VirtualBox modules are not up to LKML standards.
> That's fine, very little out of the tree is. I'm willing to bet that
> the majority of the issues are silly bugs involving pointer arithmetic
> (the usual cause of these things) and could be fixed up with minimal
> effort.
>
> Either way I don't think a sweeping condemnation of the entire product
> is the right way to go.

I read that entire thread back when it was highlighted on /.

1) The vbox driver is buggy.
2) The vbox driver is buggy in ways that cause crashes which are
difficult to debug and correctly attribute, which appears to be
discerned by statistical means.
3) The vbox driver upstream won't send their code to the kernel where
it could be cleaned up and kept in step with the rest of the kernel,
because it would restrict them from updating their API in future
versions.
4) The vbox driver functions as a wildcard when kernel devs are trying
to deal with bug reports in other areas of the code; just like heap
and stack corruption in userland apps are a royal PITA to deal with,
so are the same in kernelspace. The vbox driver is known to cause
these problems, so they don't want to deal with it.

Now, it looks like things may be in line to get better; the thread got
the attention of the vbox maintainers, and they started working on
ways to get flagged bug reports sent their way. That'll improve the
feedback they get. The code will probably improve as a result.

That said, drivers which cause random memory corruption are *not* ones
I want loaded into my kernel. Discussions around things like the vbox
kernel give me second thoughts about sweet dreams of mmapping
persistent storage block devices contiguously in a large address
space; I'd suddenly rather keep the window target small.

 I've got nothing against proprietary drivers if they're good. I've
generally had good luck with both NVidia and ATI, for example. NVidia,
especially, has been quick to respond to issues by their user
communities

> Oh, I forgot something in the first paragraph. In my experience on this
> machine we can add Firefox, OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice to the same
> list of unstable software.

Apples and oranges. FF, OO and LO don't crash the entire system when
they go up. Protected memory FTW.  Kernelspace stuff must be held to a
higher standard; they run in ring 0.

(Forgive the x86-specific terminology, but it should be analogous for
any protected-memory platform)

-- 
:wq

Re: [gentoo-user] A helping hand with virtual machines, please.

[Michael Mol]

On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 10:12 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> I notice this entire thread has carefully steered around ESXi
>
> Now there's an interesting product, with a truly fascinating licensing
> and pricing model.

ESXi isn't Linux. Or, at least, it's not something you'd run on your desktop.

But, yeah, VMWare is working hard to shake down their existing
customer base. Where I work, I'm pushing a migration to XCP. Sweet
features for far cheaper.

-- 
:wq

Re: [gentoo-user] A helping hand with virtual machines, please.

[Pandu Poluan]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 752 bytes --]

On Nov 23, 2011 10:32 PM, "Michael Mol" <mikemol@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 10:12 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>
wrote:
> > I notice this entire thread has carefully steered around ESXi
> >
> > Now there's an interesting product, with a truly fascinating licensing
> > and pricing model.
>
> ESXi isn't Linux. Or, at least, it's not something you'd run on your
desktop.
>
> But, yeah, VMWare is working hard to shake down their existing
> customer base. Where I work, I'm pushing a migration to XCP. Sweet
> features for far cheaper.
>

I'm still gathering up courage to go down the XCP path, as there are not
yet any company in my city that provides support for it. So, I went the
coward's path of XenServer :-)

Rgds,

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1019 bytes --]