Arch Linux

thecdn

Member

Registered: 2007-06-12

Posts: 21

Some questions about running arch on virtualbox at work

I'm moving into the sys admin role at work and needed to have a linux system to work on, so I naturally installed arch in virtualbox on a win 7 enterprise host. I'm running kde.

I've found that pacman works differently on this than it does on my standalone install at home:
   - I've had to remove the comment from 'XferCommand = /usr/bin/wget --passive-ftp -c -0 %o %u' in pacman.conf to prevent constant timeouts when running pacman -Syu
   - I've had to use 'IgnorePkg' for various modules like man-pages, python2-twisted, etc and especially linux for kernel updates. After several days I can usually remove the module from ignore and get a successful update but I've never had to do this at       
     home with a nearly identical standlone setup (no ati drivers at work)

I'm mounting an external drive with the following line in fstab:
"//10.xxx.x.xx/developers  /mnt/developers  cifs username=dxxxxxx,password=xxxxx,_netdev,uid=dxxxxx,gid=users,noperm,sec=ntlm 0 0"

This is the same line used by my boss in a standalone ubuntu install but in my arch install on vbox access to the developers directory will 'timeout' after 10-15 minutes and freeze either the konsole terminal or dolphin session you are using to try to access it. A reboot of arch in vbox is needed to access it again. My boss has no such issues on his standalone ubuntu install.

Can anyone think of anything I could be doing differently to address either of these two issues? Thanks for any help you can give.

ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 20,612

Re: Some questions about running arch on virtualbox at work

I have a feeling that either your corporate firewall is interfering with you, possibly changing things on the fly, or Windows security is fighting with you.  You might try turning off any firewalls on the Windows 7 host.

Also, how is your networking configured?  Are you using NAT, or are you using a tunnel?   I note that you call out a private network address that starts with 10.  Is that the address space your corporate network uses, or do they use 192 or 172? 

Also, just be be a nit-picker, the version of VirtualBox from Community uses this license.  If you are using it at work, for work, ensure you comply with the evaluation clause.  Otherwise, you may want to have your company acquire a paid license.

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thecdn

Member

Registered: 2007-06-12

Posts: 21

Re: Some questions about running arch on virtualbox at work

I turned off the firewall on the win 7 host, put pacman.conf back to normal, and did an update this morning that went fine with no problems - even including a kernel update which was a problem 80% of the time before. Hopefully this is a long term solution, thanks.