# virtualbox freebsd?



## graudeejs (Aug 20, 2009)

I was wondering, what is your experience with VirtualBox?
Is it sable, fast? Bugs?


----------



## avilla@ (Aug 20, 2009)

it is stable and fast on 8-stable with winxp as a guest (it runs faster than when it was installed on hard disk)... bugs: not big ones, and i've been using it since it was in testing


----------



## tkjacobsen (Aug 20, 2009)

On 7.2 after the update to virtualbox 3.something my guest freebsd would freeze while running 'portsnap fetch extract' (disk io i guess), AND take the host system with it - hard reset needed... I haven't been able to trace the problem further yet, unfurtunately.

However, my linux guest work with no problems.


----------



## CodeBlock (Aug 21, 2009)

Well... it's much faster than qemu, but a few issues I've had with it (xp as guest, freebsd as host), are: When I try to open it, I sometimes have to try a good 10-15 times, before the GUI will show... This happens on both my desktop and laptop. Another bug is that when I tried to reload vboxdrv (the kernel module) it caused a kernel panic on my desktop, so I had to reboot.

On the wiki, http://wiki.freebsd.org/VirtualBox , it says that USB doesn't work yet, not sure if that's been worked on (haven't tried). Also on the wiki (and this I *can* confirm), host CD drive access doesn't work, so you need to use an iso to install...

Basically it's a good start, but I'm looking forward to updates and seeing more stuff work.


----------



## CodeBlock (Aug 24, 2009)

regarding my first issue I mentioned:

```
.-(~)---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------(21:30:41)-
`--> VirtualBox 
^C
.-(~)---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------(21:30:43)-
`--> VirtualBox 
^C
.-(~)---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------(21:30:45)-
`--> VirtualBox 
^C
.-(~)---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------(21:30:47)-
`--> pgrep VirtualBox
.-(~)---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------(21:30:50)-
`--> ps ax | grep -i virtual
.-(~)---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------(21:30:55)-
`-->
```

any ideas?


----------



## sprewell (Aug 29, 2009)

I finally compiled VirtualBox, after installing the lib32 libraries on my 7.2-amd64 system as detailed here,  and set it up as the handbook says but had the same problem where it appeared to be running but nothing happened.  I took a look at the FreeBSD wiki page for VirtualBox and noticed the last comment about two VirtualBox processes running sometimes.  I followed the instructions there and killed one process and VirtualBox finally worked. :e I then tried starting it several times to see if the problem was reproducible and it was almost every time, I think it started once or twice out of ten without needing me to manually kill the second process.  I presume this should be an easy fix, but it doesn't work out of the box.


----------



## xiaoj (Aug 29, 2009)

I enjoy VirtualBox running under my FreeBSD 7.2 RELEASE box, I use it to run xp and plan to run gentoo and suse. It use less resouces and is much faster.

But the problem i think is its network. only NAT was supported, i am not able to share network function from other machines via subnet. I am looking forward to the bridge network functionality.

Thanks for developer.


----------



## CodeBlock (Aug 29, 2009)

sprewell said:
			
		

> I finally compiled VirtualBox, after installing the lib32 libraries on my 7.2-amd64 system as detailed here,  and set it up as the handbook says but had the same problem where it appeared to be running but nothing happened.  I took a look at the FreeBSD wiki page for VirtualBox and noticed the last comment about two VirtualBox processes running sometimes.  I followed the instructions there and killed one process and VirtualBox finally worked. :e I then tried starting it several times to see if the problem was reproducible and it was almost every time, I think it started once or twice out of ten without needing me to manually kill the second process.  I presume this should be an easy fix, but it doesn't work out of the box.




Right, but in my case there is no other process running when it won't start... Seems weird and I don't know how to even go about debugging it.


----------



## sirinon (Aug 20, 2010)

no major issues , once on 8.1 it would start rebooting evry 10 mins or so, then again I had borked the box up alot with random packages and a rebuild was faster than browsing through /var .


----------



## OH (Aug 21, 2010)

xiaoj said:
			
		

> But the problem i think is its network. only NAT was supported, i am not able to share network function from other machines via subnet. I am looking forward to the bridge network functionality.



Wait no longer. Bridging was introduced some time ago and works perfectly in my experience!

@CodeBlock: Do you load vboxdrv.ko at boot? I remember similar issues when loading it by hand (i.e. only when you want to use VirtualBox)


----------



## kpedersen (Aug 21, 2010)

I find VirtualBox to work really well and a great way to pass around fully activated pirated software with your friends haha

So the score is...

Legitimate Software Users: -1
DRM: 0
Pirates: 1

It doesn't have 2D acceleration, but has the option of enabling 3D acceleration, though I have not tried it out.


----------

