[gentoo-user] VirtualBox question on Thinkpad laptop

[gentoo-user] VirtualBox question on Thinkpad laptop

[Walter Dnes]

  Long-story-short; I run ArcaOS (backwards compatable OS/2 successor)
as a guest on QEMU on my desktop.  The Lenovo Thinkpad has the "vmx" cpu
flag, so QEMU is theoretically doable.  But the mouse is extremely
flakey, to the point of unusability, under QEMU on the Thinkpad.  I've
tried various tweaks, but no luck.  I "asked Mr. Google", but only found
other people with the same problem... and no solution.

  Plan B) According to the ARCA NOAE website
https://www.arcanoae.com/wiki/arcaos/installation-planning/virtual-machine-configuration/oracle-vm-virtualbox/
ArcaOs can be installed in a VirtualBox VM, masquarading as OS/2 (I did
say it was backwards compatable).

  Are there any booby-traps to watch out for?  What I'm most concerned
about is the default "qt5" USE flag.  Is VirtualBox usable without the
qt5 GUI?

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>
I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications

Re: [gentoo-user] VirtualBox question on Thinkpad laptop

[Michael]

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On Saturday, 20 August 2022 07:30:01 BST Walter Dnes wrote:
>   Long-story-short; I run ArcaOS (backwards compatable OS/2 successor)
> as a guest on QEMU on my desktop.  The Lenovo Thinkpad has the "vmx" cpu
> flag, so QEMU is theoretically doable.  But the mouse is extremely
> flakey, to the point of unusability, under QEMU on the Thinkpad.  I've
> tried various tweaks, but no luck.  I "asked Mr. Google", but only found
> other people with the same problem... and no solution.

I've noticed the same problem with a MSWindows VM on a laptop, but only when 
the screen resolution for the VM is anything other than full screen on the 
host.  The starting ritual to rectify this involves pressing Esc repeatedly as 
Tianocore screen starts to come up, then select 'Reset', which resizes the 
Tianocore window and when the MSWindows VM starts I use Ctrl+Alt+F to enter 
full screen mode.  If I don't do this the VM window is small(er), the 
resolution will not resize to full screen even when the window is maximised 
and the mouse is sticky/jumpy and its real position displaced on the guest's 
screen - I have to guess where it will actually land before I click on 
anything.  Other OS VM guests, e.g. Linux, *BSDs, Android, etc. do not exhibit 
this problem.


>   Plan B) According to the ARCA NOAE website
> https://www.arcanoae.com/wiki/arcaos/installation-planning/virtual-machine-c
> onfiguration/oracle-vm-virtualbox/ ArcaOs can be installed in a VirtualBox
> VM, masquarading as OS/2 (I did say it was backwards compatable).
> 
>   Are there any booby-traps to watch out for?  What I'm most concerned
> about is the default "qt5" USE flag.  Is VirtualBox usable without the
> qt5 GUI?

I use the Qt5 GUI on VBox which offers a very user friendly management 
interface.  However, recently I am not able to boot MSWindows OSs.  I think, 
but I'm not sure, some recent kernel settings have hardened (Spectre_v2?) and 
it seems the MSWindows OS requires access to the host which is no longer 
allowed.   VBox complains about AHCI driver corruption, kernel and system 
problems and gets into a loop of trying to auto-correct whatever has the 
problem - but fails.  I haven't tried reverting kernel settings to see if the 
MSWindows VM will be able to run normally again.  I'd be interested to find out 
if there are any workarounds to get these VBox VMs to run again, but haven't 
had time to look into it.

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Re: [gentoo-user] VirtualBox question on Thinkpad laptop

[Walter Dnes]

On Sat, Aug 20, 2022 at 09:05:32AM +0100, Michael wrote

> I've noticed the same problem with a MSWindows VM on a laptop,
> but only when the screen resolution for the VM is anything other
> than full screen on the host.

  Thanks.  That clue finally got me going with QEMU, but there are a few
head scratchers that I'll gladly ignore now that QEMU is working.

Head scratcher #1) After a "native install" of the ArcaOS VM on the
Thinkpad, the bootup on the Thinkpad screams about multiple missing
drivers for ArcaOS, "Press Enter to continue".  Meanwhile a copy of the
install on my Dell desktop PC boots up just fine on the ThinkPad (but
has mouse problems).

Head scratcher #2) The "native install" of ArcaOS VM on the Thinkpad has
multiple video resolution options, but it does *NOT* have 1280x800 to
match the Thinkpad.  Meanwhile, the ArcaOS VM I copied from my desktop
(1920x1080 monitor) does have a 1280x800 option!

Head scratcher #3) After struggling with the mouse, I finally managed to
change the ArcaOS install (copied from my desktop to the ThinkPad) to
1280x800, and then rebooted the VM.  Once I fire up the VM, it works OK
with the USB mouse *AS LONG AS I DO NOT GO FULLSCREEN {CTRL-ALT-F}*.  If
I go fullscreen, the mouse goes super-flakey again.  Since both the VM
and the laptop screen are 1280x800, I'm missing very little screen real
estate.  Just a thin white strip across the top with the QEMU menu bar
("Machine View").

  So far, so good.  If you don't hear back from me, assume that I'm
happy with the way things are going.  Once again, thanks for pointing me
in the right direction.

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>
I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications

Re: [gentoo-user] VirtualBox question on Thinkpad laptop

[Michael]

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On Saturday, 20 August 2022 18:57:38 BST Walter Dnes wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 20, 2022 at 09:05:32AM +0100, Michael wrote
> 
> > I've noticed the same problem with a MSWindows VM on a laptop,
> > but only when the screen resolution for the VM is anything other
> > than full screen on the host.
> 
>   Thanks.  That clue finally got me going with QEMU, but there are a few
> head scratchers that I'll gladly ignore now that QEMU is working.
> 
> Head scratcher #1) After a "native install" of the ArcaOS VM on the
> Thinkpad, the bootup on the Thinkpad screams about multiple missing
> drivers for ArcaOS, "Press Enter to continue".  Meanwhile a copy of the
> install on my Dell desktop PC boots up just fine on the ThinkPad (but
> has mouse problems).
> 
> Head scratcher #2) The "native install" of ArcaOS VM on the Thinkpad has
> multiple video resolution options, but it does *NOT* have 1280x800 to
> match the Thinkpad.  Meanwhile, the ArcaOS VM I copied from my desktop
> (1920x1080 monitor) does have a 1280x800 option!
> 
> Head scratcher #3) After struggling with the mouse, I finally managed to
> change the ArcaOS install (copied from my desktop to the ThinkPad) to
> 1280x800, and then rebooted the VM.  Once I fire up the VM, it works OK
> with the USB mouse *AS LONG AS I DO NOT GO FULLSCREEN {CTRL-ALT-F}*.  If
> I go fullscreen, the mouse goes super-flakey again.  Since both the VM
> and the laptop screen are 1280x800, I'm missing very little screen real
> estate.  Just a thin white strip across the top with the QEMU menu bar
> ("Machine View").
> 
>   So far, so good.  If you don't hear back from me, assume that I'm
> happy with the way things are going.  Once again, thanks for pointing me
> in the right direction.

You're welcome, I'm glad you got somewhere.  TBH I don't claim this is the 
right way to go about it, just the workarounds I have come up with after 
trying different resolutions on the QEMU TianoCore EFI menu, then the MSWindows 
desktop resolution menu and then switching back and forth between full screen 
and the default VM window size.  Unless I escape the TianoCore boot process to 
select Reset, the window of the VM ends up being smaller than full screen, 
inheriting the size of the TianoCore menu window, no matter what the 
resolution of either the TianoCore or the MSWindows desktop has been set at 
and the mouse is jumpy and displaced an inch or so from where I end up 
clicking.

 With VBox, while it worked, I had no such problems once VBox Additions were 
installed on the guest.

Regarding the head scratchers with your ArcaOS it may be different the guests 
graphics drivers and settings are made available/configured at installation 
time, as long as the VM container can detect these from the host.  Perhaps an 
inherited full screen is necessary for the installation to assume the 
appropriate window resolution dimensions.

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Re: [gentoo-user] VirtualBox question on Thinkpad laptop

[Grant Taylor]

On 8/20/22 12:30 AM, Walter Dnes wrote:
> Long-story-short; I run ArcaOS (backwards compatable OS/2 successor) 
> as a guest on QEMU on my desktop.

Aside:  Is ArcaOS really a different version of OS/2?  Or is it still 
4.x with patches and updated drivers?  I saw extremely little 
difference, other than eye candy / included open source packages, 
between IBM OS/2 Warp 4.5x, eComm Server, and ArcaOS.

Further Aside:  I run anything in the above to be able to drive my 
P/390-E PCI card.

> The Lenovo Thinkpad has the "vmx" cpu flag, so QEMU is theoretically 
> doable.  But the mouse is extremely flakey, to the point of 
> unusability, under QEMU on the Thinkpad.  I've tried various tweaks, 
> but no luck.  I "asked Mr. Google", but only found other people with 
> the same problem... and no solution.

This sounds extremely reminiscent of guest OS driver / utility 
integration, or rather the lack there of, when running OS/2 et al. in VM.

> Are there any booby-traps to watch out for?  What I'm most concerned 
> about is the default "qt5" USE flag.  Is VirtualBox usable without 
> the qt5 GUI?

I've not fond much effective difference in the various hyper visors, 
save for driver / guest OS additions / integration maturity level. 
Sure, different hyper visors have varying maturity levels of the 
management utilities.  But I've gotten all of them to do what I want.  I 
prefer VirtualBox on stand alone workstation for lab / play thing and 
VMware's (free) ESXi on my server for things I want running months at a 
time (read: to continue running when I reboot my workstation to change 
kernels).

I assume that since you're running ArcaOS, that you have support from 
Arca Noae.  As such, I'd open a support ticket with them and ask about 
guest add-ons for various hyper visors.

I don't know the current state of 3rd party guest add-ons for OS/2 / eCS 
/ ArcaOS under VirtualBox.  Hopefully they've improved since the last 
time I looked.

Surprisingly enough, I think the best integration that I ever saw was 
under an *OLD* version of Microsoft's Virtual PC / Virtual Server / 
Hyper-V.  Back when they still supported OS/2 as a guest OS in an 
official capacity.  Perhaps you can run an old version thereof or 
extract the guest add-ons therefrom and use them elsewhere.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die

Re: [gentoo-user] VirtualBox question on Thinkpad laptop

[Walter Dnes]

On Sat, Aug 20, 2022 at 03:46:59PM -0600, Grant Taylor wrote
> On 8/20/22 12:30 AM, Walter Dnes wrote:
> > Long-story-short; I run ArcaOS (backwards compatable OS/2 successor) 
> > as a guest on QEMU on my desktop.
> 
> Aside:  Is ArcaOS really a different version of OS/2?  Or is it still 
> 4.x with patches and updated drivers?  I saw extremely little 
> difference, other than eye candy / included open source packages, 
> between IBM OS/2 Warp 4.5x, eComm Server, and ArcaOS.

  ArcaOS started at version 5.0 to pay homage to the fact that it's
effectively OS/2 Warp 5.

> I assume that since you're running ArcaOS, that you have support from 
> Arca Noae.  As such, I'd open a support ticket with them and ask about 
> guest add-ons for various hyper visors.

  Yes, but the Google hits I got were for people trying to run various
versions of Windows and linux as a QEMU guest on a Lenovo laptop.  This
indicates a more general Lenovo-QEMU conflict, going beyond ArcaOS.  If
my system stays stable for a week or so, I'll consider submitting a FAQ
entry to QEMU.org for Lenovo laptops.

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>
I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications