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Messages - DavidR

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1
Hi Jailbird

Thank you for the reply. I was aware of the setting in the Info.plist that would make the app launch in non-retina mode. This then allows you to run the VM with 100% scaling. It's way too small normally to use 100% and you have to use 200% to give you the correct size when using a Retina display.

However if you make the suggested change and try to launch the Virtual Box VM under macOS Sonoma it refuses to start and complains about the app signature being broken. This doesn't happen with Monterey, so I thought I was stuck using the 200% setting with Sonoma.

BUT, I've just discovered that you can launch the app and pass an 'AppleMagnifiedMode' argument to open it in non-retina mode. This does work so I can launch a specific VirtualBox VM from the command line using:

   open /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/Resources/VirtualBoxVM.app --args -AppleMagnifiedMode YES -comment ArcaOS-Exp --startvm 2f3f6889-be25-42ba-a78a-83a4c6be3139 --no-startvm-errormsgbox

This does indeed seem to be little bit faster. Not hugely, but everything helps.

So, after playing with lots of settings, the configuration I'm now using is:

   1920x1080 resolution, 65536 colours, 100% scaling, non-retina app mode

It is still too slow for comfort so I will continue to investigate and I might raise a ticket with the VirtualBox developers, but it is a bit more useable than it was.

Many thanks
David

2
JTA - Thanks for your response.  I've had a look at the VirtualBox documentation and I didn't see any clues as to why it would be suddenly slow. I might research the VMWare side if I get a chance.

It is probably graphics-related, but I'm not sure. The cpuspeed results are slower than expected even with no graphics activity happening. Maybe the graphics drivers are stealing a lot of CPU that would otherwise be used to contribute to the calcs cpuspeed is doing? I don't know enough about this area.

Martin - I've replied on the post you created on the VirtualBox forum and provided an explanation, a log file and some screenshots of cpuspeed numbers I am getting.  I think they'll appear once moderated. Hopefully we will get somewhere.

3
Martin - sure, no problem. That's what I meant.

4
JTA - I definitely get a network connection with VMWare. I can surf the web and ping. What I don't get is shared folder functionality between the guest and host OS.

5
Martin - thanks for raising a ticket. Sure, I will provide a log when I'm back at my Mac. I'm currently travelling until Wed.

6
Thank you everyone for the helpful replies. (Sorry this is long). I'm in the process of re-installing various combinations of things to get a better idea of what is going on.

To answer some of the questions above:

@KO Myung-Hun: No, the older VirtualBox 6 does show the blue V chip instead of the green turtle when running the VM. So the issue might well be the super slow green turtle that happens on VirtualBox 7. As Roderick mentions it looks like VirtualBox has been forced to use Apple's hypervisor framework since macOS Ventura onwards. I don't have control over the Paravirtualization Interface that is chosen - it seems to always to be None.

@Martin: Thanks. I've started from scratch with the 7.1.6 VirtualBox version and Extensions and am following the installation guide on the ArcaOS website exactly.

@Sigurd: Are you able to confirm if the VMWare Tools I'm using are the ones that you use? I'm using the ones from https://github.com/wwiv/os2-guest/releases/ ?

@JTA: Thanks. I'll use the standard VirtualBox Additions that come with ArcaOS and not downgrade or upgrade anything.

What isn't explained in all this Apple hypervisor explanation is how VMWare continues to get very good performance on the latest macOS versions, but VirtualBox doesn't. Presumably they too have had to use Apple's framework. Hmm ... Here are some posts about the poor performance:

   https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=110591
   https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=109695
   https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=111784
   https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/22004
      (the last comment)
   https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=107801
      (but disabling IO-APIC didn't seem to help me)
   https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=109722

I ran a small cpu speed exe that I got from (what was) Hobbes and the frequency given for VMWare matched my real CPU almost exactly, and consistently. Whereas the VirtualBox reading varied wildly and was much slower.

I realise you guys are mostly PC people and we Mac users are a minority here, but it would be great to get your thoughts: If Apple's hypervisor means the green turtle is always used, then how would Windows as a guest on VirtualBox 7 on a Mac host run with acceptable performance? Is there something special about Windows running as a guest in VirtualBox that ArcaOS doesn't benefit from? Maybe it is a 64-bit thing?

Despite my earlier prediction that VMWare was the way to go, there also seems to be a network issue with VMWare on macOS 15 Sequoia (the latest macOS). After about 5 minutes the network in ArcaOS drops then might come back 15 mins or so later, then goes again. It's not an IP or MAC address clash which was my first thought. This does not happen with macOS 14 Sonoma, the previous version - it seems rock solid. Someone else has seen something similar I think:

https://community.broadcom.com/vmware-cloud-foundation/discussion/fusion-network-bridge-issue-sequoia

So I'll continue to experiment and see if I can get closer to acceptable performance. I may possibly ask questions/open tickets at Virtual Box over the green turtle performance and VMWare over the network droppage with macOS 15 Sequoia.

It would be a shame if running ArcaOS on a Mac was no longer viable, even on an Intel Mac. Running on an Arm Mac is another nightmare entirely! I might be forced to buy myself an old ThinkPad to get my OS/2 fix ... but I have enough hardware already!

Thanks all.

7
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.

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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

9
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

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