Arch Linux

ZeroGravitas

Member

Registered: 2011-09-17

Posts: 7

Graphics performance issues as virtualbox guest

Hi everyone,

I've been running arch natively on my 2013 macbook pro retina for a while but recently decided to run it in virtualbox hosted in OSX. I've got arch installed and am running gnome shell in the virtual machine, the problem I'm having is that the graphics performance is terrible, windows judder and lag when moving them around the desktop and scrolling is extremely jerky. Things i have done:

- I have installed the guest additions and made sure the guest modules are loaded.
- I have checked the 'enable 3D acceleration' box in virtualbox settings
- I have also checked that DRI is enabled using glxinfo.

One possible complication is that i am running virtualbox beta 5 but I have also tried with the stable edition and experienced the same issues.

I have no idea how to diagnose this and don't even know if acceptable performance is possible with this set up so any help is very welcome.

Thanks
Alex

Last edited by ZeroGravitas (2015-05-26 12:02:20)

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,330

Website

Re: Graphics performance issues as virtualbox guest

This just came through as a report rather than a reply:

How much virtual memory do you have assigned to your virtual machine. I run a VM with 2305 MB display and there is a slight delay on this laptop.

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"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

ZeroGravitas

Member

Registered: 2011-09-17

Posts: 7

Re: Graphics performance issues as virtualbox guest

I'm on an 8G machine with 6G assigned to the VM.

mwillems

Member

Registered: 2014-08-09

Posts: 91

Re: Graphics performance issues as virtualbox guest

Does your glxinfo show "Gallium" or "Chromium" as the renderer (not related to the browser)?  If it shows Gallium, 3D acceleration is not working.

You mention running Gnome; If you're using GDM as your desktop manager, that's likely to be your issue.  Gnome itself is fine, but GDM 3.16 breaks 3d acceleration in virtualbox guests. There's a bug open on the Gnome Bugzilla about it: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=749390

Try switching to LightDM; that fixes it for me.  If that solves your problem you might want to add to the bug report.

Last edited by mwillems (2015-05-27 16:13:25)

ZeroGravitas

Member

Registered: 2011-09-17

Posts: 7

Re: Graphics performance issues as virtualbox guest

That seems to have solved the issue, I'll jump into the bug report.

I am experiencing another issue now which is that running firefox causes the screen to rapidly switch resolutions, but I think this might be related to the firefox AutoHiDPI extension I'm running.

Thanks very much for the help.

Alex