Virtualization issues...

The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Mon May 22, 2017 11:14 pm Post subject: Virtualization issues...

I am posting this here because virtualization is a kernel thing. If this is wrong, please move the thread to the correct location.

I installed Gentoo onto a Dell Latitude E5440. It has a quad-core i5 CPU and 8GB of RAM. I am trying to install Windows 7 and Windows 10 into VirtualBox. Never had issues before. However, Windows 7 will get to the point of extracting files, site for five minutes at 0%, then throw an error about not having all the files it needs, as though the ISO was ejected from the virtual drive. It was not ejected. It then allows me to click install again, but now it asks for a driver, thought it doesn't say what. The VMs are stored on an ext3 partition. The ISO images are on the main BTRFS partition. Not sure what's causing this but I have been stuck for hours here. Ideas?
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R0b0t1 · Apprentice Joined: 05 Jun 2008 Posts: 264

You can use virtio devices and download the Windows drivers from the Fedora Project. If what you are doing is using the default emulated device I'm at a loss as to why it fails. Is there any console output? Do you run out of space?

The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Tue May 23, 2017 2:21 am Post subject:

OK, the ISO works on my laptop. On this one it fails. Using the actual OEM disc in the real DVD-ROM worked. The last ISO I used was created from that disc. I know using a VM on BTRFS is a no-no, but are you telling me VBox has become so crappy I can't even use ISO images stored on a BTRFS partition? VBox 5.x has really sucked. Random lock-ups, sometimes when you shut it down you get a dialog saying something crazy where the bar goes to 28% and then below that "8 minutes remaining". Can I roll back to VirtualBox 4.x? Five is a sorry alpha at best.
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R0b0t1 · Apprentice Joined: 05 Jun 2008 Posts: 264

The media might be degrading on your BTRFS partitions, and that seems like the most likely culprit.

1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

Are you using thin provisioned disks? I tried upgrading an old win7 vm to win10 back when it was still free, it paused for hours and never got anywhere significant. I converted to thick provisioning and the upgrade was done in minutes.

Sorry for the language, I was using virtualbox but I'm using thin/thick provisioning terms from VMware. Thin is where only space used by the guest is allocated on the host hard disk, and grows as needed.

Ant P. · Watchman Joined: 18 Apr 2009 Posts: 6920

That sounds likely if it's the case. Btrfs has known problems with sparse/loopback files due to the COW feature (e.g. swap files won't work either without some serious hacks).

The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Wed May 24, 2017 1:00 am Post subject:

I am not writing to BTRFS. I store my ISO images there and it has worked flawlessly for eons. You're suggesting that read-only access to an ISO file can be problematic on a BTRFS volume?
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1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

I'm not saying anything about btrfs. I'm talking about your disk image for the hard disk. Is it dynamically allocated or fixed size?

My first post in this thread related how windows 7->windows 10 upgrade hung for hours when on a dynamically allocated disk, but ran fast on a fixed size disk.

So are your disks dynamically allocated? If so, perhaps you can try to duplicate them as fixed size and build a VM with those disks.

The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Fri May 26, 2017 3:42 am Post subject:

Never used static in all the years I have used VBox. Never had issues either. Ant was right however. BTRFS, even when used for a read-only operation, is disliked by VBox. I feel this is an error/bug on Oracle's end since the virtual disks are on ext3 and we're merely reading from a file residing on a BTRFS system. No big deal, but annoying. I now have to copy the guest additions ISO from the system partition (BTRFS) to an ISO directory on the ext3 partition every time VBox updates.
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1clue · Advocate Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 2569

The_Great_Sephiroth · Posted: Fri May 26, 2017 2:51 pm Post subject:

It's been solved, it was VBox being incompatible with BTRFS for any use at all. Again, dynamic disks on ext3 on that system, and on ext4 on this system and the install phase flies. I wasn't even getting through the install phase before and the issue was not the disks as they resided on the ext3 system. It was failing to read the ISO images after a few minutes. The ISO images were on BTRFS.
_________________
Ever picture systemd as what runs "The Borg"?