Arch Linux

dvh

Member

Registered: 2007-10-06

Posts: 41

Arch as a Virtualbox Guest

All:

i am not quite sure where to post this sort of question...maybe this is the wrong category?  Anyway, I am trying to host Arch as a guest OS in Virtualbox (over OSX).  I can install just fine, and for the most part everything works.  but if I walk away and leave it for a couple of days, arch is locked-up in any of a variety of ways.  sometimes Arch just runs VERY VERY slowly.  other times, it is responsive to the keyboard, but nothing happens (no command execution) in response.  other times it is just plain dead.  other times it crashes.

i would normally consider VB the culprit, but other distros (I have tried Mint, slitaz, vector, PClinuxOS, DSL, puppy) and OSs (FreeBSD, XP) do not show the same problems.  maybe this is some sort of kernel or module configuration?  I am not using any form of screensaver on Arch, because I had some problems with that initially.

also, I have used the same virtual disks in VMs under KVM and Xen, so I don't think I have an Arch OS corruption of any kind.

any idea what could cause this sort of issue?  any idea how or where to start investigating?

thanks in advance for any help you might offer...

-dvh

PSW

Member

From: Brighton

Registered: 2011-06-15

Posts: 32

Re: Arch as a Virtualbox Guest

What video driver are you using?

dvh

Member

Registered: 2007-10-06

Posts: 41

Re: Arch as a Virtualbox Guest

Thanks for the interest.  I'm using the VirtualBox video, as gets installed with Guest Additions.  its called "vboxvideo".

I am thinking this might have something to do with my .vdi file.  I had trouble installing FreeBSD into the compressed .vdi, but it works fine with the full size image.  Arch installed into the compressed image OK, but there may be something about creeping image size (due to periodic logging, etc.) that would cause a problem.  I'm just guessing at this point, so I created another Arch VM, this time with the full size image, and I am testing that now.

-dvh