Re: many strange things happening in 6.4.3
Hello JD,
On Mon, Jan 24, 2011 at 07:17:40PM -0800, JD wrote:
> Running within Virtualbox.
> doing ls /UIONFS/lib emits tons of error messages
> that I am unable to copy and paste into the host
> OS Gnome-Terminal. Well, that's OK as far as copy and paste
> because there is a problem with sharing the copy buffer between
> host and guest.
> But the errors within Knoppix are strange.
> All commands in /usr/bin simply belch out
> Input/Output error. That's it.
> No other error message.
> Attempting to change the font of gnome-terminal
> ultimately killed all responsiveness. I could no longer
> interact with the booted OS. All I could do was to
> halt the guest OS (i.e. Knoppix) via the virtual machine
> manager.
To get things into the right context prior to debugging: All this has
happened so far ONLY in virtualbox, right? I know of some issues with
virtualbox concerning Debian as guest system, but before we get there,
please let me know:
1. Which version of virtualbox are you using?
2. Which guest/host extensions are you using,
and do the match your kernel and the virtualbox version you are using?
3. Which hardware options did you set in order to boot Knoppix (Disk/DVD controller,
graphics adapter etc.).
I recently enabled a few virtualization extensions in the Kernel, SCSI
controller driver for vmware for example, in order to get Knoppix
running faster in virtualized environments. This could be one cause of
the problem, in case that your virtualbox version is incompatible with
these extensions. I would recommend using the very newest virtualbox
version available, since some bugs related to Linux guests may have been
fixed there.
> So, my experience with this release so far has been
> rather disappointing.
Understandable, but so far, it looks to me like some kind of
incompatibility between your virtualbox version and the original
kernel.org kernel that Knoppix uses. It may get better by updating
either virtualbox, a virtualbox module, or the Knoppix kernel. If you
like, I can give you early access to the next release (6.4.4) which is
due in a few days, it has kernel 2.6.37 and:
ii virtualbox-ose-guest-modules-2.6.37 3.2.12-dfsg-1+2.6.37-10.00.Custom VirtualBox guest addition modules for Linux (kernel 2.6.37)
ii virtualbox-ose-guest-utils 3.2.12-dfsg-1 x86 virtualization solution - non-X11 guest utilities
> To be fair, I will attempt to boot on the hardware machine itself
> and see if I can replicate these problems.
My first guess would be: "no problems on real hardware".
> I had thought I had ram problems. So I ran x86mem tester.
If you have Ram problems, they would probably not show up in the
virtualbox guest, but virtualbox should crash by itself.
> Let it run for hours. No errors.
>
> Will report back after I reboot into real hardware.
Just received your answer telling that everything is OK on real
hardware. I'm happy to hear that! Answering your next questions right now.
Regards
-Klaus
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