VirtualBox broken on Ivy Bridge Macbooks after 10.8.2 and Firmware Update

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4311118?start=15&tstart=0

by roachsocal • 14 years ago

122 50 14 years ago

discussions.apple.com

fjcero• 14 years ago

We will have a hard time coming https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/10965

zrail2• 14 years ago

This is another benefit of still being on Lion. I didn't have to deal with weird homebrew issues and now I don't have to deal with this. I have not upgraded to Mountain Lion on any of my machines, and the way things are going I'm probably not going to until forced.

elithrar• 14 years ago

> I didn't have to deal with weird homebrew issues...

Just out of curiosity: which weird issues? The only "issues" I had involved installing XQuartz, and chowning /usr/local/ back to me[1]

[1] http://robots.thoughtbot.com/post/27985816073/the-hitchhiker...

zrail2• 14 years ago

I don't actually know any details. All I know is that when several of my coworkers upgraded to 10.8 components of their homebrew setup stopped working. It may have been related to ruby.

igorgue3• 14 years ago

Basically:

Oracle: We reported the bug a long time ago and still Apple released the update.

Apple: ...

Me: How the fuck am I going to work tomorrow? Maybe going full Vagrant wasn't a good idea after all :(

webjprgm2• 14 years ago

Is there a discussion with details on the issue? Parallels and VMWare release new versions all the time for compatibility issues, they just fix them before the update comes so their new version is ready. Should VirtualBox just fix the bug on their side, or is this really an Apple issue?

igorgue3• 14 years ago

I'm not sure who to blame, these are the details everyone is posting so far: https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/10965 It seems like the VirtualBox community was talking about this problem for a long time already, since early september.

nettdata2• 14 years ago

Just revert back to the backup you took right before you did the upgrade.

You DID do a backup, didn't you? You HAVE tested that your backups are working, by doing a complete recovery with them, right?

Right? ;)

My personal philosophy is to be cutting edge on my personal/hobby gear (like the last gen MB Pro I keep for, ah, movies and such), but not to do ANY same-day updates on anything even remotely required for work. That shit stays behind the times but reliable for paying the bills.

After I've seen the upgrades working in the wild for a week or two, and I have verified that all the stuff I need actually works like I need it to, THEN I'll do the upgrade on my work box. After backing it up, of course. Hell, I even have a text file with search phrases and forum URLs for the software I need to have working to make it easy and ensure I don't miss anything.

Call me crazy, but I've learned that lesson the hard way.

EchoAbstract• 14 years ago

This seems to be based on an upgrade to the EFI firmware, in addition to the 10.8.2 update. While I've got verified backups for the OS, I'm not in the habit of regularly backing up the EFI firmware, nor do I know how I would restore it on my MBP.

Anyone got advice for backing up firmware on laptops to allow for roll-backs on breaking changes?

mitchellh2• 14 years ago

(Vagrant creator here)

Ugh. This is a pretty bad situation. I took a look at the VirtualBox Darwin driver source code as well as the relevant method in the Darwin kernel (`host_vmxon`), and I can't see a workaround that I can meaningfully or confidently contribute. I'm hoping for a quick turnaround by Oracle or Apple on something here. :(

For the future, I've been working on VMWare support for some time now, and it should be ready in the next few months. These sorts of problems will be mitigated then by saying "oh, well you can just use Vagrant with X instead for now" (where X is some other virtualization layer).

For now, I'm sorry, I don't think there is anything I can do here.

jherdman• 14 years ago

Thanks for looking into this and working so hard on Vagrant. It's an awesome product.

igorgue3• 14 years ago

It's not your fault, I shouldn't have upgraded :( Thanks for vagrant it's really awesome!

misnome• 14 years ago

I've used virtualbox for a while, but hadn't heard of Vagrant; it looks awesome. Luckily, this article popped up before I upgraded, so I'm sticking firmly to .1 now.

But I'm definitely going to download and use vagrant now :)

blairwadman• 14 years ago

I've used VMWare for a while now, and it is indeed very fast. I've just started using Vagrant (thanks for creating it!) and love it, despite the slowness of Virtual Box. Good luck with VMWare support, I'm looking forward to that.

dchichkov3• 14 years ago

You have Linux/Ubuntu development envinroment, right? Why do you use it in a VM on a Mac in the first place?

Why not just using a fast desktop with a couple of monitors at your workplace? And ssh/xterm to it, if you need to work remotely?

adrianhoward3• 14 years ago

Because being able to have a copy of the deployment environment - especially one that you can build, deploy and test automatically, is stupidly useful.

It's not being able to have a linux machine. It's being able to have one that you can build, throw away, test different deploy strategies on, etc. etc.

Suddenly you have all the developers dealing with deployment problems as soon as they occur - cutting that loooooong feedback loop to minutes saving everybody time, pain and money.

TL;DR - coz it's a good thing :-)

nicholassmith2• 14 years ago

I'd be interested in knowing whether this is genuinely a bug on Apple's side or whether it's something that VirtualBox should have been aware of. It sounds like a bug, but if there's an issue with virtualization surely VMWare and Parallels would also have broken functionality as well.

m_eiman2• 14 years ago

https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?p=52266

The "VMX root mode" problem is known since at least 2008. On Linux hosts it's been possible to disable whatever puts the CPU into that mode, but that may be harder on OSX.

jeffh• 14 years ago

And somehow VMware Fusion doesn't have any problems after the same update ... sometimes you do get what you pay for (then again, I remember when an earlier Fusion update bricked itself, so YMMV).

vosper• 14 years ago

The other thing you get with Fusion (and Parallels, but not Virtual Box) is decent performance; in my office we're all running Ubuntu in Fusion on OSX - we were running Virtual Box until we realised our unit tests ran in half the time under Fusion.

But that's pretty much what I'd expect from two companies in the business of virtualisation, versus one behemoth who really doesn't care - particularly if they're not making a significant slice of revenue (or any?) from it.

caycep2• 14 years ago

Hm - is this just for Mac OS X or is this true for the windows version of virtualbox as well?

I was trying to find the difference between virtualbox and vmware player on the windows side.

Can't really decide between parallels and fusion though...I need to run some opengl stuff which isn't too complicated, but I'd rather it be solid. But I do like to use virtualbox to test some python/django/nginx builds so better ubuntu and networking support would be nice.

thejosh• 14 years ago

I'm getting mass tearing with my work iMac and VMWare Fusion, Parallels locks you in at 60.

I also found Parallels 8 to have a bug where when using it with Ubuntu 12.04 XFCE, it would skip tabs in Chrome. Downgraded back to 7 - 8 was a free upgrade for me anyway.

Have you locked your framerate to 60 with fusion? I'd be interested in using fusion 5 if it has good performance compared to Parallels, especially now that 8 is buggy for me.

dorian-graph• 14 years ago

A main reason many of us use Virtualbox is because of Vagrant. If the same thing was easily possible (Is it?) with Parallels or VMWare we'd use those exclusively. I have licenses for both and use Parallels for any Windows-required work.

mitchellh2• 14 years ago

Vagrant will work with Parallels and VMWare in the next 12 months.

dchichkov3• 14 years ago

If it is Linux/Debian/Ubuntu the development environment setup problem can be solved by maintaining internal apt repository. It takes a bit of effort to setup, but after that it is a really smooth ride.

room606• 14 years ago

Can anyone confirm this update does not break VirtualBox on the mid 2011 Macbook Air i7? I rely on Vagrant and am not feeling confident enough to update since the issue appears to be related to VT-x on the CPU

0x0• 14 years ago

For what it's worth, I just updated to 4.1.22 on such a machine and a snapshotted VM resumed without any trouble.

Edit: And then also to 4.2.0 without trouble.

pmjordan• 14 years ago

Has anyone installed the relevant firmware update https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1590 for 2010 MacBook Airs? I'd like to know if that introduces the same bug.

sounds• 14 years ago

https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/10965 indicates that it's the Ivy Bridge skus, so I think your 2010 Air is ok. Caveat emptor: I do NOT own a 2010 MacBook Air.

roachsocal• 14 years ago

The (annoying, but working) workaround is the following:

I imported my Vagrant-managed Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS VM into a trial copy of Parallels Desktop 8. I then logged into the VM manually using the Parallels VM window using the default Vagrant user / password (vagrant/vagrant) and changed the password for my custom Vagrantfile dev login. Then in Parallels I switched the networking on the VM to Bridge Mode (so I can access it via IP address on my local network).

Remarkably everything in the VM worked and I'm back to coding. Would like to see a quick fix for VirtualBox so I can get back to my Vagrant awesomeness.

qq66• 14 years ago

It seems as though it will take a few more of these before Apple users learn what Windows users learned awhile ago -- there's rarely any good reason to upgrade any software, particularly your operating system, immediately upon release.

GraffitiTim• 14 years ago

From vbox forums, someone at Oracle:

"That said, I believe we're now far enough along to say that there will highly likely be at least a test build pretty soon. Certainly sooner than in two weeks..."

https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?p=236591#p236591

VirtualBox broken on Ivy Bridge Macbooks after 10.8.2 and Firmware Update

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