Re: [gentoo-user] virtualbox + kernel panic 2.6.38-r2

[Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com>]

On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 12:11 PM, Tanstaafl <tanstaafl@libertytrek.org> wrote:
> On 2011-05-31 1:31 PM, James wrote:
>> The only thing I've read online that may be applicable is that there
>> have been some issues with kernel panics when you give the guest OS
>> more than 1 processor. It would suck badly if SMP didn't work well on
>> vbox.
>
> My understanding is it is a general rule that you never give any VM more
> than one processor, regardless of which vm hypervisor you are running...
>
>
My platform is a Gentoo i7-980 Extreme processor so I have 12 CPUs (6
cores * 2 for hyperthreading)

In Virtualbox I'm running both Gentoo and Win 7 VMs, each allocated 4
processors. In Win 7 I have one app that uses everything it can find
so when it's running all 4 processors are 100% utilized. In Linux I
see the CPU usage at 33%. Win 7 is sluggish when this app is running
as it hogs from the system

In VMWare Player I'm running Win XP VMs with 2 processors. None of my
apps in XP use more than 1 processor. XP itself is quite responsive
even when these apps are using 1 of the 2 processors dedicated the the
VM.

I seldom run more than 1 app in any Windows VM as I don't trust
Windows. I've not had any problems with any of these VMs that I'd
associate with using multiple cores.

And yes, I do own these Windows licenses. VMs keep that money useful
until some day some Linux apps come along that do what these do for me
in Windows.

- Mark