Author Topic: Very poor performance of ArcaOS on VirtualBox 7 on Intel Mac  (Read 19515 times)

DavidR

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 10
  • Karma: +3/-0
    • View Profile
Very poor performance of ArcaOS on VirtualBox 7 on Intel Mac
« on: February 01, 2025, 08:35:57 pm »
Hi All

I've enjoyed reading the posts on this forum for a good while now but never needed to ask anything - until now.

I've been happily using ArcaOS 5.0 in a VM using VirtualBox on macOS (Intel) for many years and have gradually upgraded it to 5.0.8. It has worked fine using either the official VirtualBox additions or the alternative ones from Netlabs version 5.0.51 r218 - I think these are referred to as "Valery's".

After upgrading to macOS 14 Sonoma, I was forced to move to VirtualBox 7 due to the way the new macOS version handles kernel extensions and virtualisation. In doing this the performance of the ArcaOS VM plummeted. It is virtually unusable and no end of tweaking configuration settings seems to fix it. It might be a graphics problem because it is particularly slow when moving windows around or when command prompt boxes scroll. But just in general everything is very, very slow. So I am not sure.

The same VM without any changes running on an earlier macOS version with VirtualBox 6 works just fine.

I have avoided VMWare in the past for this since it was not supposed to have as good integration with OS/2 as VirtualBox, however I have installed the latest version and did a fresh install of ArcaOS 5.0.8. To my surprise it is running much faster than VirtualBox does - and has very, very acceptable performance. (Whereas a similar fresh install on VirtualBox is still very slow.) However the only VMWare Tools that I can find are from https://github.com/wwiv/os2-guest/releases/. These work well, but only provide mouse/pointer integration and clipboard synchronisation. This is a great start, but not as good as what VirtualBox provides, especially custom resolutions and shared folders.

So my questions to the kind people on this forum would be:

1) Is anyone else experiencing the same thing? And if so does anyone know how to get the performance back in VirtualBox 7?

2) Does anyone know where I can get better VMWare Tools? Ones that would also have the shared folder function? While watching the recordings of the last Warpstock presentations, I vaguely recall someone mention that they had access to some VMWare tools? Do you know if/where I coud find those to try out? Or maybe they are the same ones I am using ...

I hope I don't have to give up on running ArcaOS on my Mac, but it is becoming increasingly difficult. Any help greatly appreciated!

Thanks
David

Roderick Klein

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 727
  • Karma: +14/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Very poor performance of ArcaOS on VirtualBox 7 on Intel Mac
« Reply #1 on: February 01, 2025, 08:44:43 pm »
Configure the VM to run with 1 CPU core, if it does not run with one CPU core already.

Roderick Klein

Paul Smedley

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2512
  • Karma: +190/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Very poor performance of ArcaOS on VirtualBox 7 on Intel Mac
« Reply #2 on: February 01, 2025, 09:56:39 pm »
Configure the VM to run with 1 CPU core, if it does not run with one CPU core already.

Sorry, but this is bad advice. Modern virtualbox allows ArcaOS to run just fine in SMP mode with multiple cores.

KO Myung-Hun

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 77
  • Karma: +11/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Very poor performance of ArcaOS on VirtualBox 7 on Intel Mac
« Reply #3 on: February 02, 2025, 08:18:37 am »
In my cases, setting CPU count to 1 increased performance. More CPUs than 1 decreased performance to 5x to 10x, especially when using autotools and cmake and so on.

KO Myung-Hun

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 77
  • Karma: +11/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Very poor performance of ArcaOS on VirtualBox 7 on Intel Mac
« Reply #4 on: February 02, 2025, 08:30:12 am »
@DavidR Check if your hardware virtualization is activated. You can check if a turtle() or a V() is on the status line for this. And if moving mouse cursor over it, you can see the detailed status for virtualizaiton.

Paul Smedley

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2512
  • Karma: +190/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Very poor performance of ArcaOS on VirtualBox 7 on Intel Mac
« Reply #5 on: February 02, 2025, 09:19:37 am »
In my cases, setting CPU count to 1 increased performance. More CPUs than 1 decreased performance to 5x to 10x, especially when using autotools and cmake and so on.
See reply #804 of https://www.os2world.com/forum/index.php?topic=3182.795 for my experiences.

Lars

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 1426
  • Karma: +72/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Very poor performance of ArcaOS on VirtualBox 7 on Intel Mac
« Reply #6 on: February 02, 2025, 11:27:05 am »
I never was able to run eCS with more than one core on Virtualbox.
The test that will always fail is to run a makefile that calls the old MS C compiler cl.exe a few times. That will always lead to a hang with more than one core.
In general, it is not easy to detect this kind of problem. You might be able to run the system with multiple cores enabled for quite some time before the problem manifests itself.
I strongly doubt that that will work any better with AN but I could try. But Paul, you could also try the opposite and do multiple invocations of cl.exe on an AN system under Virtualbox. As an example, build the USB drivers from the DDK.
« Last Edit: February 02, 2025, 11:32:39 am by Lars »

Sigurd Fastenrath

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 649
  • Karma: +36/-0
  • OS/2 Versus Hardware - Maximum Warp!
    • View Profile
Re: Very poor performance of ArcaOS on VirtualBox 7 on Intel Mac
« Reply #7 on: February 02, 2025, 12:07:04 pm »

I have avoided VMWare in the past for this since it was not supposed to have as good integration with OS/2 as VirtualBox, however I have installed the latest version and did a fresh install of ArcaOS 5.0.8. To my surprise it is running much faster than VirtualBox does - and has very, very acceptable performance. (Whereas a similar fresh install on VirtualBox is still very slow.) However the only VMWare Tools that I can find are from https://github.com/wwiv/os2-guest/releases/. These work well, but only provide mouse/pointer integration and clipboard synchronisation. This is a great start, but not as good as what VirtualBox provides, especially custom resolutions and shared folders.


As I am very pleased with VMWare as well but could not get Sound working, regardless wich OS/2 Version and VMWare Version combination and wich emulated Sound driver or Hardware I would like to know if you have been able to get Sound support for OS/2 inside VMWare? Thanks!

KO Myung-Hun

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 77
  • Karma: +11/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Very poor performance of ArcaOS on VirtualBox 7 on Intel Mac
« Reply #8 on: February 02, 2025, 12:36:43 pm »
Here are my test result:

Code: [Select]
                                          1CPU              2CPUs
configuring of liba52(autotools):       00:13.75          01:08.00
building of liba52(make):               00:06.64          00:12.82
configuring of fluidsynth(cmake):       00:49.88          03:46.80
building of fluidsynth(make):           00:46.57          01:59.65

However, building time of dav1d using meson and ninja with 2 CPUs is as half as 1 CPU.

If there are any ways to improve performance on VirtualBox SMP, please share them.

** ADDED **
Code: [Select]
                               1CPU          2CPUs
configuring of dav1d(meson): 00:11.65      00:18.48
building of dav1d(ninja):    01:30.84      00:53.35
« Last Edit: February 02, 2025, 01:04:22 pm by KO Myung-Hun »

DavidR

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 10
  • Karma: +3/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Very poor performance of ArcaOS on VirtualBox 7 on Intel Mac
« Reply #9 on: February 02, 2025, 01:25:45 pm »
Thanks for all the replies.

I didn't change the configuration of the VM when I moved from VB6 to VB7. It is set up to use only one CPU. I'd be happy to keep it using only one since I don't think I'll be doing anything too CPU intensive. But I might experiment later.

@KO Myung-Hun: There is a green turtle in the status bar and the tooltip over the top says:

Execution Engine:            native API
Nested Paging:               Inactive
Unrestricted Execution:       Inactive
Execution Cap:                100
Paravirtualization Interface:   None

In case it is useful, the system tab for the VM is configured as:

Motherboard:
   Base Memory: 3072MB
   Chipset: PIIX3
   TPM: None
   Pointing Device: PS/2 Mouse
   Extended Features:
      YES:   Enable I/O APIC
      NO:      Enable Hardware Clock in UTC Time
      NO:      Enable EFI
      
Processor:
   Processors:      1 CPU
   Execution cap:   100%
   Extended Features:
      NO:   Enable PAE/NX
      NO: Enable Nested VT-x/AMD-V
      
Acceleration:
   Paravirtualization Interface:   Native
   Hardware Virtualization:      YES - Enable Nested Paging

DavidR

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 10
  • Karma: +3/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Very poor performance of ArcaOS on VirtualBox 7 on Intel Mac
« Reply #10 on: February 02, 2025, 01:44:18 pm »
As I am very pleased with VMWare as well but could not get Sound working, regardless wich OS/2 Version and VMWare Version combination and wich emulated Sound driver or Hardware I would like to know if you have been able to get Sound support for OS/2 inside VMWare? Thanks!

Aaah. Yes, there is no sound in VMWare. I hadn't noticed that. There are beeps when I use vim but no multimedia sound. Shame.

VirtualBox did have sound in VB6, but it is choppy now with VB7.

David McKenna

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 875
  • Karma: +30/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Very poor performance of ArcaOS on VirtualBox 7 on Intel Mac
« Reply #11 on: February 02, 2025, 02:48:46 pm »
Hi David,

 I am running ArcaOS in a VirtualBox 7.1.6 VM on Win 11 and I notice a few differences in our settings. I set 'Enable Hardware Clock in UTC Time' ON, 'Enable PAE/NX' ON, and 'Enable Nested VT-X/AMD-V' ON. Also, my Paravirtualization Interface is set to 'Default'.

 No idea if these will make any difference, but you could try them. Being a Mac host might change the requirements, I'm not familiar with Macs...

Regards,

Roderick Klein

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 727
  • Karma: +14/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Very poor performance of ArcaOS on VirtualBox 7 on Intel Mac
« Reply #12 on: February 02, 2025, 02:55:04 pm »
Configure the VM to run with 1 CPU core, if it does not run with one CPU core already.

Sorry, but this is bad advice. Modern virtualbox allows ArcaOS to run just fine in SMP mode with multiple cores.

On Linux that is true it seems. But this is a MacOS system. From what I understand Virtualbox has to use virtualsation layer offered by MacOS. And this layer with multiple CPU enabled kills system performance.

Roderick

Martin Iturbide

  • OS2World NewsMaster
  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5255
  • Karma: +44/-1
  • Your Friend Wil Declares...
    • View Profile
    • Martin's Personal Blog
Re: Very poor performance of ArcaOS on VirtualBox 7 on Intel Mac
« Reply #13 on: February 02, 2025, 04:53:49 pm »
Hello DavidR.

This may not be the best advice:

1) Check if you can also update the "VirtualBox Extension Pack 7.1.6" (at the right side of the page), I noticed that when I update VirtualBox and forget about that extensions, sometime I have strange behaviors.

2) If you have some time, why don't you create a new VM and install ArcaOS again just to see if the performance keeps being that bad during the install.
- Check the recommendations that you may follow here: https://www.arcanoae.com/wiki/arcaos/installation-planning/virtual-machine-configuration/oracle-vm-virtualbox/

- Check that you are using the latest VirtualBox 7.1.6 for MacOS.
- After that, install also the "VirtualBox Extension Pack 7.1.6" just in case.

Regards
Martin Iturbide
OS2World NewsMaster
... just share the dream.

Sean Casey

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 131
  • Karma: +3/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Very poor performance of ArcaOS on VirtualBox 7 on Intel Mac
« Reply #14 on: February 02, 2025, 10:37:38 pm »
As I am very pleased with VMWare as well but could not get Sound working, regardless wich OS/2 Version and VMWare Version combination and wich emulated Sound driver or Hardware I would like to know if you have been able to get Sound support for OS/2 inside VMWare? Thanks!

While I couldn't get VMware's SB16 emulation working, I pass through a USB sound adapter to AOS, which works well.