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#1 2007-01-15 11:09:31

n8schicht
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From: Südbaden
Registered: 2006-12-27
Posts: 138
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VirtualBox and Arch... Howto?

Hello!

Maybe you already noticed, there is a nice "VMWare-Clone" out there, called VirtualBox. http://www.virtualbox.org/

Has somebody already tested it and got it to run? I tried to do so, but the kernel module vboxdrv.ko doesn't seem to load properly:

FATAL: Error inserting vboxdrv (/lib/modules/2.6.19-ARCH/misc/vboxdrv.ko): Invalid argument

Does somebody know how to fix this for Arch?

Thank you in advance!

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#2 2007-01-15 11:37:40

tomk
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From: Ireland
Registered: 2004-07-21
Posts: 9,839

Re: VirtualBox and Arch... Howto?

Haven't heard of it, but as a general rule, external kernel modules of that sort need to be compiled against the kernel you want to use them with. How did you create this module? Is the source code available?

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#3 2007-01-15 12:59:54

Mr Green
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From: U.K.
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Posts: 5,893
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Re: VirtualBox and Arch... Howto?


Mr Green

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#4 2007-01-15 14:15:48

tomk
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From: Ireland
Registered: 2004-07-21
Posts: 9,839

Re: VirtualBox and Arch... Howto?

Suspect phrase:

If you use GCC 4.x for building VirtualBox, the build system will use precompiled objects for the recompiler as compiling this module currently only works with GCC 3.x.

I'm not motivated enough to check it out, but I think they're saying that GCC4 users like us will have to make do with precompiled kernel modules - hence your problem. Someone somewhere may have patched it - google will tell you. In any case, mail the developers with a polite yet firm request for GCC4 support. If they have a bugtracker, use that too.

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#5 2007-01-16 20:38:09

n8schicht
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From: Südbaden
Registered: 2006-12-27
Posts: 138
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Re: VirtualBox and Arch... Howto?

Hello guys

Thank you for your answers so far!
I wrote an e-mail this evening to the support people at Innotek and asked how to get VirtualBox to run under ArchLinux. Well, the answer came very quickly and was kind of funny, so I'm gonna publish it here  wink

###############################################

Hallo,

ich hatte bis heute noch nie von Arch Linux gehört. Allerdings arbeiten schon Leute an der Unterstützung wie ich gehört habe.

Grüße,

###############################################

It translates like this:

Hello,

until today I never heard of Arch Linux before. But as it got to my attention, people are already working on support for it.


So, I think we can expect Arch-optimized binaries in the future.


'Til then!

Greetz
Armin

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#6 2007-01-16 21:30:52

tomk
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From: Ireland
Registered: 2004-07-21
Posts: 9,839

Re: VirtualBox and Arch... Howto?

n8schicht wrote:

So, I think we can expect Arch-optimized binaries in the future.

Sounds interesting, although I'd prefer working source code myself. smile

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#7 2007-01-16 22:55:19

n8schicht
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From: Südbaden
Registered: 2006-12-27
Posts: 138
Website

Re: VirtualBox and Arch... Howto?

tomk wrote:

Sounds interesting, although I'd prefer working source code myself. smile

Did you already take a look at the VirtualBox Open Source Edition?

svn co http://virtualbox.org/svn/vbox/trunk vbox

Though I'm too stupid, I need the binaries   :shock:

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#8 2007-01-16 23:23:06

arew264
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From: Friendswood, Texas, US
Registered: 2006-07-01
Posts: 394
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Re: VirtualBox and Arch... Howto?

One thing you could do would be to compile it under GCC 3, which is quite possible, and I don't really see any issue with it.

Just pacman -Sy gcc3

and change any references to gcc in any makefiles to gcc3, and hopefully it'll compile.

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#9 2007-01-16 23:38:09

sargon
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Registered: 2006-07-05
Posts: 18

Re: VirtualBox and Arch... Howto?

I tried to build the source my self. But there are some deps i have no packages for so building these should be the first step to get virtualbox into aur. Except the gcc could be a real problem.

* GCC 3.2.3 or later
???? problem

* as86 (real mode assembler, usually part of the dev86 or bin86 package)
jo is in current (bin86)

* bcc (Bruce Evans C Compiler; often part of the dev86 package)
Not found

* IASL (Intel ACPI compiler)
found in aur

* xsltproc (libxslt, XML style sheet processor)
found in current (libxslt)

* libxerces (Xerces XML parser; the C++, not the Java version)
found in community (xerces-c)

* libxalan (Xalan XSL library, depends on Xerces; again, the C++, not the Java version)
found in community (xalan-c)

* libXcursor (required to support color mouse pointers in guest)
found in current (libxcursor)

* Qt 3.3.x (with x >= 5 if possible)
öh jo no search needed

* libIDL
found libIDL2 in current and libidl in extra

* libSDL
should be sdl in current

* uuid
not found

So makeing pkgs of uuid and bcc will be the first goal to get an pkg of virtualbox

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#10 2007-01-16 23:54:56

tomk
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From: Ireland
Registered: 2004-07-21
Posts: 9,839

Re: VirtualBox and Arch... Howto?

Correct Sargon. I'm looking at bcc now.

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#11 2007-01-16 23:57:54

sargon
Member
Registered: 2006-07-05
Posts: 18

Re: VirtualBox and Arch... Howto?

Ah you couldn't find it too ... nice to hear that i'am not alone wink

I will try to get uuid for now

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#12 2007-01-17 00:02:37

sargon
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Registered: 2006-07-05
Posts: 18

Re: VirtualBox and Arch... Howto?

Could it be that uuid is represented by uuidgen in e2fsprogs

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#13 2007-01-17 00:51:41

sargon
Member
Registered: 2006-07-05
Posts: 18

Re: VirtualBox and Arch... Howto?

So this works for me, have fun with it.
After that i have to manipulate the configure script
in vbox svn checkout and change some bcc_path settings
to get the bcc compile check search for bcc_cpp in /usr/lib/bcc/

than start configuration with
./configure --with-qt-dir=/opt/qt
and follow installation instruction.
Build isn't ready at my side so try a little around for your self
---------------------------cut---------------------------
# Contributor: Daniel Ehlers <danielehlers>
pkgname=dev86
pkgver=0.16.17
pkgrel=1
pkgdesc="Linux 8086 development environment"
url="http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robert.debath/"
license="GPL2/LGPL"
depends=('glibc')
makedepends=()
conflicts=()
replaces=()
backup=()
install=
source=(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robert.debath/dev86/Dev86src-0.16.17.tar.gz
)
md5sums=('e7bbfdbe61c2fb964994a087e29b0087')

build() {
  cd $startdir/src/$pkgname-$pkgver
  sed -e 's/PREFIX= .*$/PREFIX= ./usr/g'  Makefile > Makefile.sed
  mv Makefile Makefile.bak
  mv Makefile.sed Makefile
  mkdir usr
  make
  make install
  mv usr $startdir/pkg
  cd $startdir/pkg
  rm usr/bin/as86
  rm usr/bin/ld86
  rm usr/bin/nm86
  rm usr/bin/objdump86
  rm usr/bin/size86
}

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#14 2007-01-17 01:02:01

sargon
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Registered: 2006-07-05
Posts: 18

Re: VirtualBox and Arch... Howto?

Ok compiling is finished and I build kernel module following the build instructions. And I get the same

FATAL: Error inserting vboxdrv (/lib/modules/2.6.19-beyond/misc/vboxdrv.ko): Invalid argument

as befor. So gcc 4.x is a real problem ?

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#15 2007-01-17 01:25:00

Mikos
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From: Prague, Czech Republic
Registered: 2005-05-03
Posts: 228
Website

Re: VirtualBox and Arch... Howto?

I have created VirtualBox PKGBUILDs and uploaded them to AUR. You can find them here:

virtualbox-svn
virtualbox-modules-svn

Another packages you will need for building VirtualBox (dev86, iasl) are already in AUR.

Btw. virtualbox-modules-svn PKGBUILD is building whole VirtualBox source tree. This is highly inefficient (and slow), it would be much better if it can build only kernel modules, but I didn't find way how to do it. So if you have solution, please tell me, I will update virtualbox-modules-svn PKGBUILD accordingly.

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#16 2007-01-17 01:32:47

Mikos
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From: Prague, Czech Republic
Registered: 2005-05-03
Posts: 228
Website

Re: VirtualBox and Arch... Howto?

sargon wrote:

Ok compiling is finished and I build kernel module following the build instructions. And I get the same

FATAL: Error inserting vboxdrv (/lib/modules/2.6.19-beyond/misc/vboxdrv.ko): Invalid argument

as befor. So gcc 4.x is a real problem ?

GCC 4.x isn't problem (well, if you use GCC 4.x, VirtualBox's recompiler isn't built, precompiled binary is used instead, but this is OK). The problem is Linux kernel 2.6.19 (and higher). You must add this line to kernel boot parameters (for example in /boot/grub/menu.lst):

nmi_watchdog=0

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#17 2007-01-17 09:35:00

sargon
Member
Registered: 2006-07-05
Posts: 18

Re: VirtualBox and Arch... Howto?

Yeah, now all run fine.

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#18 2007-01-17 09:48:46

n8schicht
Member
From: Südbaden
Registered: 2006-12-27
Posts: 138
Website

Re: VirtualBox and Arch... Howto?

Mikos wrote:

You must add this line to kernel boot parameters (for example in /boot/grub/menu.lst):

nmi_watchdog=0

Great, thank's for that hint! I cannot believe that this is all that's needed to make it work like a charm!   big_smile

EDIT: As I just noticed, they already updated their FAQ:
http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/User_FAQ

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#19 2007-01-17 09:58:08

Mr Green
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From: U.K.
Registered: 2003-12-21
Posts: 5,893
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Re: VirtualBox and Arch... Howto?

how does virtualbox compare to qemu or vmplayer ?


Mr Green

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#20 2007-01-17 11:25:30

tomk
Forum Fellow
From: Ireland
Registered: 2004-07-21
Posts: 9,839

Re: VirtualBox and Arch... Howto?

Nice work, mikos. smile

I'm sure there's a solution for the modules package too - I'll have a look later on.

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#21 2007-01-17 11:25:48

n8schicht
Member
From: Südbaden
Registered: 2006-12-27
Posts: 138
Website

Re: VirtualBox and Arch... Howto?

German newssite Heise has a nice article about VirtualBox:
http://www.heise.de/open/artikel/83678

They also did some kind of performance test (they used "grep" on a directory with about 100MB of data) and compared VMware and VirtualBox. It's worth a look.

Does somebody know how to create a shortcut to an XP-installation, so I just have to doubleclick that and it will be started automatically?

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#22 2007-01-17 11:57:08

sargon
Member
Registered: 2006-07-05
Posts: 18

Re: VirtualBox and Arch... Howto?

Mr Green wrote:

how does virtualbox compare to qemu or vmplayer ?

VirtualBox is in the emulation way equivalent to vmware (vmplayer with support for creating vms), i haven't benchmark results to evaluate the performance between these.

QEMU emulates the complete Hardware of the Guest System so vmware and also vbox should be faster. Except they need a x86 System as a host
to virtualize this architecture.

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#23 2007-01-17 13:28:57

Mikos
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From: Prague, Czech Republic
Registered: 2005-05-03
Posts: 228
Website

Re: VirtualBox and Arch... Howto?

VirtualBox architecture should have better performance than VMWare. In fact it should have also better performance than hardware virtualization (KVM or Xen on Intel VT-x / AMD-V CPUs). It has support for Intel VT-x and AMD-V, but it isn't enabled by default, because in case of hardware virtualization a special CPU environment has to be entered in order to execute guest code and whenever activity of the VMM is required, this environment has to be left and then entered again (from VirtualBox FAQ). This is slower than software virtualization approach.

In benchmark on heise.de, VMWare has been slightly better (18,1 s vs. 20,2 s - grep on 100MB of data), but this is highly specific test. In some cases VirtualBox is better.

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#24 2007-01-17 13:45:08

Mr Green
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From: U.K.
Registered: 2003-12-21
Posts: 5,893
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Re: VirtualBox and Arch... Howto?

I'm interested as I sometimes run vmplayer ... but it can be a pain to set up [configs modules etc...] booting time is very slow [setting up hardware etc..]

Will give it go sometime

Mikos for Arch developer ;-)


Mr Green

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#25 2007-02-04 07:31:48

Mr Green
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From: U.K.
Registered: 2003-12-21
Posts: 5,893
Website

Re: VirtualBox and Arch... Howto?

Password:

missing make dependencies:
>> dev86
>> iasl

missing dependencies:
>> virtualbox-modules-svn
>> xalan-c

aurbuild: dependency "dev86" not found in abs.

when running aurbuild...

just thought I would mention it not a problem....


Mr Green

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