Author Topic: VirtualBox problems  (Read 58220 times)

Dariusz Piatkowski

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Re: VirtualBox problems
« Reply #60 on: April 04, 2018, 10:27:27 pm »
Mark,

...You might want to try the above Dariusz or others and see if the same workaround works for you...

Actually, my configuration is working fine once I realized I was running the wrong version of VBox for the driver I was loading in CONFIG.SYS.

Your challenge looks like lack of shared memory. Run that shmemmon utility and watch it to see what's available, I'm guessing you will be able to co-related your ability to successfully run VBox with the times your system is showing sufficient shared memory available.

Mark Szkolnicki

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Re: VirtualBox problems
« Reply #61 on: April 04, 2018, 10:49:52 pm »
Good Afternoon Dariusz!

Mark,

I use a handly little utility called 'shmemmon' to show me the size of available shared memory. I took a quick look on Hobbes for this, but did not find it. I've attached to the post for your use, or if you reluctant to run this search for the shmemmon.zip out there.

Downloaded and Thanks! When I have a bit of time I'll try it.

I assume it just runs in the background until terminated?

Dave,
What file system do you use on the other hard drive for the disk images?

...HPFS386...

Further to Davids question, I noted in your CONFIG.SYS that support for JFS seemed to be disabled - I assume your using HPFS386 on all your partitions?

Mark,

...You might want to try the above Dariusz or others and see if the same workaround works for you...

Actually, my configuration is working fine once I realized I was running the wrong version of VBox for the driver I was loading in CONFIG.SYS.

Your challenge looks like lack of shared memory. Run that shmemmon utility and watch it to see what's available, I'm guessing you will be able to co-related your ability to successfully run VBox with the times your system is showing sufficient shared memory available.

I will try it Dariusz and I suspect your right. Out of curiosity how much physical memory do you have installed, and how much shared memory do you have available, as per shmemmon.

That will give me some basis for comparison, based on us both getting the same error originally, but your ability to successfully start up a VM with the configuration switch.

M
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Dave Yeo

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Re: VirtualBox problems
« Reply #62 on: April 04, 2018, 11:09:17 pm »
Mark,

I use a handly little utility called 'shmemmon' to show me the size of available shared memory. I took a quick look on Hobbes for this, but did not find it. I've attached to the post for your use, or if you reluctant to run this search for the shmemmon.zip out there.

These tools can be misleading as the memory can get fragmented. For example, program needs 100 MBs of shared memory, meanwhile other programs have allocated 75 MBs a few times and released every other 75 MB chunk. Utility says 150 MBs free but because it is actually two 75 MB chunks, allocating 100 MBs fails.
Theseus is one of the few utilities that can actually show how big of chunks are free but unluckily it is hard to use.

Mark Szkolnicki

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Re: VirtualBox problems
« Reply #63 on: April 05, 2018, 03:11:47 am »
Mark,

I use a handly little utility called 'shmemmon' to show me the size of available shared memory. I took a quick look on Hobbes for this, but did not find it. I've attached to the post for your use, or if you reluctant to run this search for the shmemmon.zip out there.

It actually seems to be a little utility which Jan van Wijk (of DFSee) created in 2002, hence the reason it was not posted to Hobbes, I suspect.

I created a program object and used SHMEMMON this evening to test shared memory both available and used. For the test I only used Seamonkey and VirtualBox, although a number of system related programs were also running in the background.

The numbers below are the available shared memory reported by SHMEMMON, after various actions were undertaken:

Opening VirtualBox first (without starting Seamonkey):

Initial original shared memory report - no additional load - 253.5 Mb
Virtualbox Program started -  231,2 Mb
Windows XP VM start  175.3 Mb
Seamonkey Program started with VirtualBox and VM start-up  85.5 Mb
Windows XP VM open and active (Seamonkey running) 74.3 Mb
VirtualBox VM shutdown (Seamonkey running)  129.8 Mb
VirtualBox Program Shutdown (Seamonkey running) 150.3 Mb
Start VirtualBox Program again (Seamonkey running) 129.5 Mb
Windows XP VM start (Seamonkey running) 85.5 Mb
Windows XP VM open and active (Seamonkey running) 74.3 Mb
Windows XP VM closed (Seamonkey Active) 129.5 MB
VM start 84.3 Mb
VM open 74.3 Mb
VM closed 130.0 Mb
VirtualBox Shutdown 143.3 Mb
Seamonkey closed 243.2 Mb

I rebooted and also undertook the rest starting Seamonkey first, then VirtualBox:

Initial shared memory report - no additional load  252.5 Mb
No startup of either program, but reported a minute later by SHMEMMON  244.0 Mb (background start-up of something in ArcaOS?)
Seamonkey started  152.8 Mb
VirtualBox started  122.5 Mb
Windows XP VM started and active (Seamonkey running) 69.5 Mb
Windows XP VM stopped 122.5 Mb
VirtualBox Program stopped 152.5 Mb
Seamonkey Program stopped 243.5 Mb

As Dave Yeo has said, the program results may be misleading but it shows what seemed to be happening with shared memory at least for this test, using only two programs. Not being a developer, and having no basis of comparison, I don't know if the shared memory initially reported is low, high, or about normal based on the physical memory installed, other parameters set, or the various apps loaded by the ArcaOS system in the background. I also don't know if anyone has used Theseus or some other program to measure how much shared memory either program requires to initialize.

I still found during the test, though, that I needed the 15 second delay prior to starting a VM in VirtualBox to get it to consistently open normally (the reason I tested the VM opening and closing three times in the first test). I have no idea why that works, but it  seems to be consistent for me, although for others your YMMV it seems.

Thought you all might be interested and Best of the evening!

Mark

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Dave Yeo

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Re: VirtualBox problems
« Reply #64 on: April 05, 2018, 04:11:15 am »
Your initial shared memory is slightly low compared to here with ArcaOS but reasonable.
This is actually low shared memory. OS/2 (ver 2+) was originally designed to only make 512 MBs of memory available to a process and the kernel and system DLLs get a good chunk of that, which gives you your initial 250 MB or so of free memory. Doesn't matter how much ram you have installed as the swap file can take up any slack.
Starting with Warp Server and including Warp 4.5 (Warp 4+fp13) and newer, there is also upper shared memory, up to 2GB or so depending on the virtualaddress setting. The problem with this memory is it is only usable by pure 32 code.
You can use http://www.gus.biysk.ru/os4/tools/highmem.exe to set (some) DLLs to load high and save on low memory. Works mostly well with the newest kernel included with ArcaOS. With SeaMonkey closed, try running himem -b *dll in the SM program directory and retest your shared memory use. Sometimes, especially with older kernels, your better to use himem -c to only load the code high. Run himem -? to see all options including how to unmark. Experiment, don't load system DLLs high and if things start crashing, unmark.

Mark Szkolnicki

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Re: VirtualBox problems
« Reply #65 on: April 05, 2018, 07:54:28 pm »
Good Morning Dave!

Your initial shared memory is slightly low compared to here with ArcaOS but reasonable.
This is actually low shared memory. OS/2 (ver 2+) was originally designed to only make 512 MBs of memory available to a process and the kernel and system DLLs get a good chunk of that, which gives you your initial 250 MB or so of free memory. Doesn't matter how much ram you have installed as the swap file can take up any slack.
Starting with Warp Server and including Warp 4.5 (Warp 4+fp13) and newer, there is also upper shared memory, up to 2GB or so depending on the virtualaddress setting. The problem with this memory is it is only usable by pure 32 code.
You can use http://www.gus.biysk.ru/os4/tools/highmem.exe to set (some) DLLs to load high and save on low memory. Works mostly well with the newest kernel included with ArcaOS. With SeaMonkey closed, try running himem -b *dll in the SM program directory and retest your shared memory use. Sometimes, especially with older kernels, your better to use himem -c to only load the code high. Run himem -? to see all options including how to unmark. Experiment, don't load system DLLs high and if things start crashing, unmark.

Interesting.

Thanks for the detailed technical reply, Dave.

I would try what you suggest from a testing standpoint. However, as this is a working machine at the moment, I may try what you suggest on one of my experimental machines to see if I note any differences related to shared memory, with the various incarnations of eCS / ArcaOS I use. For the moment, this shared memory configuration works for all my needs, but your suggestions may be of interest, from a testing standpoint, for others.

Also, having found a solution for the VM minus 1018 start-up issue that works for me, it really is not a concern, unless I run into other problems where shared memory may be an issue.

Best as always Sir!

Mark
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Mark Szkolnicki

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Re: VirtualBox problems
« Reply #66 on: April 05, 2018, 08:50:38 pm »
Good Afternoon, Valery!


PS: No special additions version is required for 5.0.51. 5.0.51 is just a bit newer version from 5.0.6 -- no big difference, so the same 5.0.x additions should work well. Additions don't enhance performance significantly. They are for user experience with the VM to be more comfortable, e.g., shared folders, clipboard sharing, mouse pointer integration etc.


I ran into another potential issue which may be of interest, during testing.

Having found a way to consistently start a VM, I decided to try to use the VirtualBox Additions ISO to add VBOX additions to the VM, as you had indicated that the same 5.0.x additions should work well.

Reading the ReadMe that came with v5.0.6 it indicated:

Guest Additions for supported guest OSes (Windows,
Linux, OS/2) is named

     VBoxGuestAdditions_5.0.6.iso

   where 5.0.6 is the version number (it's best if it matches the version
   number of this VirtualBox package).

   Download this ZIP from the same location you took this archive from
   and unpack the contents to the directory containing VirtualBox.exe.
   After that, you can mount the Additions ISO in the Qt GUI by selecting
   Devices -> Install Guest Additions... from the menu.

I added the ISO to the \BIN directory, where VirtualBox.exe is located.  I then chose Devices | Insert Guest Additions CD Image and got:

"Could not find the Virtual Box Guest Additions disk image file"

"Do you wish to download this disk image file from the Internet"

I know it is a developmental release, but I was wondering whether anyone, using v5.0.6 had installed the Guest additions successfully and where they place the ISO file to do that?

Mark
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Mark Szkolnicki

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Re: VirtualBox problems
« Reply #67 on: April 05, 2018, 09:00:57 pm »


I added the ISO to the \BIN directory, where VirtualBox.exe is located.  I then chose Devices | Insert Guest Additions CD Image and got:

"Could not find the Virtual Box Guest Additions disk image file"

"Do you wish to download this disk image file from the Internet"


Scratch That.

Devices | Optical Drives | Choose Disk Image  got me to the \BIN directory where I was able to mount the disk image and run it.

Mark
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Doug Bissett

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Re: VirtualBox problems
« Reply #68 on: April 06, 2018, 09:32:12 pm »
VBoxGuestAdditions_5.0.6.iso must be renamed to VBoxGuestAdditions.iso, when it is placed in the BIN directory, to be recognized as the default additions ISO. You can open VBoxGuestAdditions_5.0.6.iso in the usual way though.

Dariusz Piatkowski

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Re: VirtualBox problems
« Reply #69 on: April 07, 2018, 05:46:43 am »
VBoxGuestAdditions_5.0.6.iso must be renamed to VBoxGuestAdditions.iso, when it is placed in the BIN directory, to be recognized as the default additions ISO. You can open VBoxGuestAdditions_5.0.6.iso in the usual way though.

Hmm...so here is a weird one...I have the ISO in the directory where the EXEs are (using the 5.0.6_OSE_r143 release). Attempting to mount the ISO through Mark's method fails, as does 'Devices=>Insert Guest Additions CD Image', that produces the following error:

=== START ===
Failed to open the disk image file G:\APPS\GENERAL\VBOX/VBoxGuestAdditions.iso.

Could not get the storage format of the medium 'G:\APPS\GENERAL\VBOX/VBoxGuestAdditions.iso' (VERR_NOT_SUPPORTED).

Result Code: VBOX_E_IPRT_ERROR (0x80BB0005)
Component: MediumWrap
Interface: IMedium {4afe423b-43e0-e9d0-82e8-ceb307940dda}
Callee: IVirtualBox {0169423f-46b4-cde9-91af-1e9d5b6cd945}
Callee RC: VBOX_E_OBJECT_NOT_FOUND (0x80BB0001)
=== END ===

Any ideas?

Doug Bissett

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Re: VirtualBox problems
« Reply #70 on: April 07, 2018, 08:02:26 am »
Quote
I have the ISO in the directory where the EXEs are (using the 5.0.6_OSE_r143 release). Attempting to mount the ISO through Mark's method fails, as does 'Devices=>Insert Guest Additions CD Image', that produces the following error:

That sounds like you have a bad copy. Can you mount the ISO in ISOFS?

I would suspect that you may have downloaded it in text mode, rather than in binary mode.

Dariusz Piatkowski

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Re: VirtualBox problems
« Reply #71 on: April 07, 2018, 03:55:53 pm »
Hey Doug,

...That sounds like you have a bad copy. Can you mount the ISO in ISOFS?...

Yup..you were right...thank you for pointing out the sometimes obvious culprit...I previously d/l'ed from Oracle VBox site, but as it turned out it was only a partial d/l...a new pull got me a working package.

Mark Szkolnicki

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Re: VirtualBox problems
« Reply #72 on: April 08, 2018, 03:02:34 am »
VBoxGuestAdditions_5.0.6.iso must be renamed to VBoxGuestAdditions.iso, when it is placed in the BIN directory, to be recognized as the default additions ISO. You can open VBoxGuestAdditions_5.0.6.iso in the usual way though.

Heh Doug!

It installed correctly without renaming the ISO. When mounted, and, with the additions installed the VM actually is operating about as fast as the Host (ArcaOS) which is interesting, as I have used VirtualPC for years, and it was certainly operated a lot slower. However, that is the vanilla VM - i haven't installed or ran any apps yet - that is always the torture test.

M

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Valery Sedletski

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Re: VirtualBox problems
« Reply #73 on: April 09, 2018, 09:33:27 pm »
2Mark Szkolnicki:

> First in regard to one of your previous questions the 1018 error could be "-1018" (See attached JPG). When I saw a "dash" after "Unknown error", I normally assume in english it was a pause between two phrases, not a "minus" mark.

So yes, it is -1018, which means VERR_INVALID_CPU_ID, that is what I suggested. Probably, it will be some workaround for that in the future, but now only this way, until your LAPIC ID's are consecutive.

> VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT=2560

It's too little! I have VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT=3072 on all my three machines, and everything is working. Please try to change VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT to 3072, and THREADS to 511, PROCESSES to 128 explicitly. Also, it is desirable to change JFS cache to some lesser explicit value, like:

VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT=3072
THREADS=511
PROCESSES=156
ifs=d:\os2\jfs.ifs /autocheck:* /cache:128000 /lazy:8,60,5 /p1

-- Here, JFS cache is limited to 128 MB, threads is limited to 511 threads in the system, PROCESSES are limited to 156 processes max. THREADS and PROCESSES eat up some structures per each thread/process, and they consume some hundreds of MB in the system arena, which could be too much. JFS cache is limited to 20% of available RAM, which could be too much too.  (20% from 3 GB is 614 MB, which is a large % from 1 GB of kernel memory, if VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT=3072, so JFS cache should be decreased to say, 128 MB. The exact number should be determined in Theseus). THREADS/PROCESSES/JFS cache consume memory above VIRTUALADDRESS limit (kernel memory), while VBox consumes memory below it. So, if you have too little VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT, it can be not sufficient for VBOX. If you have VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT near to 3072, then only 1024 MB above it is available for kernel and drivers. So, if THREADS/PROCESSES/JFS cache are not limited explicitly, you can easily run out of kernel memory.

PS: How much memory you assigned to your VM? 330 MB?
« Last Edit: April 09, 2018, 10:18:08 pm by Valery Sedletski »

Valery Sedletski

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Re: VirtualBox problems
« Reply #74 on: April 09, 2018, 09:54:17 pm »
2Dave Yeo:

> You can use http://www.gus.biysk.ru/os4/tools/highmem.exe to set (some) DLLs to load high and save on low memory. Works mostly well with the newest kernel included with ArcaOS. With SeaMonkey closed, try running himem -b *dll in the SM program directory and retest your shared memory use. Sometimes, especially with older kernels, your better to use himem -c to only load the code high. Run himem -? to see all options including how to unmark. Experiment, don't load system DLLs high and if things start crashing, unmark.

Yes, and I have a highmem.cmd script included in the VBox distribution, which starts highmem.exe whith required parameters, to load some segments into high memory. You can easily cause your system to hang, or some API's to fail if you try to load some DLL's both code and data segments to high memory, so, different DLL require different highmem.exe options.

For FireFox/Seamonkey it is sufficient to load only code segments of XUL.DLL high. No other DLL's are required to mark for SM/FF to be working ok.

Also, there is extpack.cmd which is useful to run if you need the VNC extpack to be working. OS/2 uses 8.3 DLL names, so, some DLL names should be shortened, that is what extpack.cmd is doing with VNC extpack DLL, and one more extpack, called DTrace.
« Last Edit: April 09, 2018, 10:23:27 pm by Valery Sedletski »