Re: [gentoo-user] Getting maximum space out of a hard drive
On 8/20/22 10:22 PM, William Kenworthy wrote: What are you measuring the speed with - hdparm or rsync or ? hdparm is best for profiling just the harddisk (tallks to the interface and can bypass the cache depending on settings, rsync/cp/?? usually have the whole OS storage chain including encryption affecting throughput. How you measure performance is a complicated thing. There is the raw device speed verses the speed of the system under normal load while interacting with the drive. At $WORK, we are more concerned about throughput of the drive in our day to day use case than drive's raw capacity. Encryption itself can be highly variable depending on what you use and usually though not always includes compression before encryption. Compression can be a very tricky thing. There's the time to decompress and compress the data as it's read and written (respectively). Then there's the throughput of data to the drive and through the drive to the media. If you're dealing with text that can get a high compression ratio with little CPU overhead, then there's a good chance that you will get more data into / out of the drive faster if it's compressed than at the same bit speed decompressed. To whit I enabled compression on my ZFS pools a long time ago and never looked back. There are tools you can use to isolate where the slowdown occurs. atop is another one that may help. Yep. [test using a USB3 shingled drive on a 32 it arm system] Is that an Odroid XU4 system? If so, why 32-bit vs 64-bit? -- Or am I mistaken in thinking the Odroid XU4 is 64-bit? xu4 ~ # hdparm -Tt /dev/sda /dev/sda: Timing cached reads: 1596 MB in 2.00 seconds = 798.93 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 526 MB in 3.01 seconds = 174.99 MB/sec xu4 ~ # If that is an Odroid XU4, then I strongly suspect that /dev/sda is passing through a USB interface. So ... I'd take those numbers with a grain of salt. -- If the system is working for you, then by all means more power to you. I found that my Odroid XU4 was /almost/ fast enough to be my daily driver. But the fan would kick in for some things and I didn't care for the noise of the stock fan. I've not yet compared contemporary Raspberry Pi 4 or other comparable systems. -- Grant. . . . unix || die
Re: [gentoo-user] Getting maximum space out of a hard drive
On 8/20/22 4:45 PM, Dale wrote: I figured it was something like that. ;-) :-) This drive is not supposed to be SMR. It's a 10TB and according to a site I looked on, none of them are SMR, yet. I found another site that said it was CMR. So, pretty sure it isn't SMR. Nothing is 100% tho. I might add, it's been at about that speed since I started the backup. If you have a better source of info, it's a WD model WD101EDBZ-11B1DA0 drive. I am so far from an authority and wouldn't know anything better than a web search for manufacturer's documents. I noticed there is a kcrypt something thread running, a few actually but it's hard to keep up since I see it on gkrellm's top process list. The CPU is running at about 40% or so average but I do have mplayer, a couple Firefox profiles, Seamonkey and other stuff running as well. I still got plenty of CPU pedal left if needed. Having Ktorrent and qbittorrent running together isn't helping. Thinking of switching torrent software. Qbit does seem to use more memory tho. Ya, the number of things hitting the drive will impact performance. The type of requests will also impact things. In my limited experience, lots of little requests seem to be harder for a drive than fewer but bigger requests. I think the 512 has something to do with key size or something. Am I wrong on that? If I need to use 256 or something, I can. My understanding was that 512 was stronger than 256 as far as the encryption goes. Agreed. At least that's the quick look at the cryptsetup man page on line showed me. But I suspect the underlying concept may still stand, even if the particular parameter in your previous message is not related. I'm going to try some tests Rich mentioned after it is done doing its backup. I don't want to stop it if I can avoid it. It's about half way through, give or take a little. :-) -- Grant. . . . unix || die
Re: [gentoo-user] Getting maximum space out of a hard drive
What are you measuring the speed with - hdparm or rsync or ? hdparm is best for profiling just the harddisk (tallks to the interface and can bypass the cache depending on settings, rsync/cp/?? usually have the whole OS storage chain including encryption affecting throughput. Encryption itself can be highly variable depending on what you use and usually though not always includes compression before encryption. There are tools you can use to isolate where the slowdown occurs. atop is another one that may help. [test using a USB3 shingled drive on a 32 it arm system] xu4 ~ # hdparm -Tt /dev/sda /dev/sda: Timing cached reads: 1596 MB in 2.00 seconds = 798.93 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 526 MB in 3.01 seconds = 174.99 MB/sec xu4 ~ # BillK On 21/8/22 06:45, Dale wrote: Grant Taylor wrote: Sorry for the duplicate post. I had an email client error that accidentally caused me to hit send on the window I was composing in. I figured it was something like that. ;-) On 8/20/22 1:15 PM, Dale wrote: Howdy, Hi, Related question. Does encryption slow the read/write speeds of a drive down a fair amount? My experience has been the opposite. I know that it's unintuitive that encryption would make things faster. But my understanding is that it alters how data is read from / written to the disk such that it's done in more optimized batches and / or optimized caching. This was so surprising that I decrypted a drive / re-encrypted a drive multiple times to compare things to come to the conclusion that encryption was noticeably better. Plus, encryption has the advantage of destroying the key rendering the drive safe to use independent of the data that was on it. N.B. The actual encryption key is encrypted with the passphrase. The passphrase isn't the encryption key itself. This new 10TB drive is maxing out at about 49.51MB/s or so. I wonder if you are possibly running into performance issues related to shingled drives. Their raw capacity comes at a performance penalty. This drive is not supposed to be SMR. It's a 10TB and according to a site I looked on, none of them are SMR, yet. I found another site that said it was CMR. So, pretty sure it isn't SMR. Nothing is 100% tho. I might add, it's been at about that speed since I started the backup. If you have a better source of info, it's a WD model WD101EDBZ-11B1DA0 drive. I actually copied that from the progress of rsync and a nice sized file. It's been running over 24 hours now so I'd think buffer and cache would be well done with. LOL Ya, you have /probably/ exceeded the write back cache in the system's memory. It did pass both a short and long self test. I used cryptsetup -s 512 to encrypt with, nice password too. My rig has a FX-8350 8 core running at 4GHz CPU and 32GBs of memory. The CPU is fairly busy. A little more than normal anyway. Keep in mind, I have two encrypted drives connected right now. The last time I looked at cryptsetup / LUKS, I found that there was a [kernel] process per encrypted block device. A hack that I did while testing things was to slice up a drive into multiple partitions, encrypt each one, and then re-aggregate the LUKS devices as PVs in LVM. This surprisingly was a worthwhile performance boost. I noticed there is a kcrypt something thread running, a few actually but it's hard to keep up since I see it on gkrellm's top process list. The CPU is running at about 40% or so average but I do have mplayer, a couple Firefox profiles, Seamonkey and other stuff running as well. I still got plenty of CPU pedal left if needed. Having Ktorrent and qbittorrent running together isn't helping. Thinking of switching torrent software. Qbit does seem to use more memory tho. Just curious if that speed is normal or not. I suspect that your drive is FAR more the bottleneck than the encryption itself is. There is a chance that the encryption's access pattern is exascerbating a drive performance issue. Thoughts? Conceptually working in 512 B blocks on a drive that is natively 4 kB sectors. Thus causing the drive to do lots of extra work to account for the other seven 512 B blocks in a 4 kB sector. I think the 512 has something to do with key size or something. Am I wrong on that? If I need to use 256 or something, I can. My understanding was that 512 was stronger than 256 as far as the encryption goes. P. S. The pulled drive I bought had like 60 hours on it. Dang near new. :-) I'm going to try some tests Rich mentioned after it is done doing its backup. I don't want to stop it if I can avoid it. It's about half way through, give or take a little. Dale :-) :-)
[gentoo-user] (G)vim 9.0.0099 won't start
Today, I updated to the latest stable Vim 9.0.0099 + GVim same & it refused to open. No problem back with 8.2.4586. Has anyone else encountered this ? Does anyone have a suggestion ? -- ,, SUPPORT ___//___, Philip Webb ELECTRIC /] [] [] [] [] []| Cities Centre, University of Toronto TRANSIT`-O--O---' purslowatchassdotutorontodotca
Re: [gentoo-user] VirtualBox question on Thinkpad laptop
On Sat, Aug 20, 2022 at 03:46:59PM -0600, Grant Taylor wrote > On 8/20/22 12:30 AM, Walter Dnes wrote: > > Long-story-short; I run ArcaOS (backwards compatable OS/2 successor) > > as a guest on QEMU on my desktop. > > Aside: Is ArcaOS really a different version of OS/2? Or is it still > 4.x with patches and updated drivers? I saw extremely little > difference, other than eye candy / included open source packages, > between IBM OS/2 Warp 4.5x, eComm Server, and ArcaOS. ArcaOS started at version 5.0 to pay homage to the fact that it's effectively OS/2 Warp 5. > I assume that since you're running ArcaOS, that you have support from > Arca Noae. As such, I'd open a support ticket with them and ask about > guest add-ons for various hyper visors. Yes, but the Google hits I got were for people trying to run various versions of Windows and linux as a QEMU guest on a Lenovo laptop. This indicates a more general Lenovo-QEMU conflict, going beyond ArcaOS. If my system stays stable for a week or so, I'll consider submitting a FAQ entry to QEMU.org for Lenovo laptops. -- Walter Dnes I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications
Re: [gentoo-user] Getting maximum space out of a hard drive
Grant Taylor wrote: > Sorry for the duplicate post. I had an email client error that > accidentally caused me to hit send on the window I was composing in. I figured it was something like that. ;-) > > On 8/20/22 1:15 PM, Dale wrote: >> Howdy, > > Hi, > >> Related question. Does encryption slow the read/write speeds of a >> drive down a fair amount? > > My experience has been the opposite. I know that it's unintuitive > that encryption would make things faster. But my understanding is > that it alters how data is read from / written to the disk such that > it's done in more optimized batches and / or optimized caching. > > This was so surprising that I decrypted a drive / re-encrypted a drive > multiple times to compare things to come to the conclusion that > encryption was noticeably better. > > Plus, encryption has the advantage of destroying the key rendering the > drive safe to use independent of the data that was on it. > > N.B. The actual encryption key is encrypted with the passphrase. The > passphrase isn't the encryption key itself. > >> This new 10TB drive is maxing out at about 49.51MB/s or so. > > I wonder if you are possibly running into performance issues related > to shingled drives. Their raw capacity comes at a performance penalty. This drive is not supposed to be SMR. It's a 10TB and according to a site I looked on, none of them are SMR, yet. I found another site that said it was CMR. So, pretty sure it isn't SMR. Nothing is 100% tho. I might add, it's been at about that speed since I started the backup. If you have a better source of info, it's a WD model WD101EDBZ-11B1DA0 drive. > >> I actually copied that from the progress of rsync and a nice sized >> file. It's been running over 24 hours now so I'd think buffer and >> cache would be well done with. LOL > > Ya, you have /probably/ exceeded the write back cache in the system's > memory. > >> It did pass both a short and long self test. I used cryptsetup -s 512 >> to encrypt with, nice password too. My rig has a FX-8350 8 core running >> at 4GHz CPU and 32GBs of memory. The CPU is fairly busy. A little more >> than normal anyway. Keep in mind, I have two encrypted drives connected >> right now. > > The last time I looked at cryptsetup / LUKS, I found that there was a > [kernel] process per encrypted block device. > > A hack that I did while testing things was to slice up a drive into > multiple partitions, encrypt each one, and then re-aggregate the LUKS > devices as PVs in LVM. This surprisingly was a worthwhile performance > boost. I noticed there is a kcrypt something thread running, a few actually but it's hard to keep up since I see it on gkrellm's top process list. The CPU is running at about 40% or so average but I do have mplayer, a couple Firefox profiles, Seamonkey and other stuff running as well. I still got plenty of CPU pedal left if needed. Having Ktorrent and qbittorrent running together isn't helping. Thinking of switching torrent software. Qbit does seem to use more memory tho. > >> Just curious if that speed is normal or not. > > I suspect that your drive is FAR more the bottleneck than the > encryption itself is. There is a chance that the encryption's access > pattern is exascerbating a drive performance issue. > >> Thoughts? > > Conceptually working in 512 B blocks on a drive that is natively 4 kB > sectors. Thus causing the drive to do lots of extra work to account > for the other seven 512 B blocks in a 4 kB sector. I think the 512 has something to do with key size or something. Am I wrong on that? If I need to use 256 or something, I can. My understanding was that 512 was stronger than 256 as far as the encryption goes. > >> P. S. The pulled drive I bought had like 60 hours on it. Dang near >> new. > > :-) I'm going to try some tests Rich mentioned after it is done doing its backup. I don't want to stop it if I can avoid it. It's about half way through, give or take a little. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] Getting maximum space out of a hard drive
Sorry for the duplicate post. I had an email client error that accidentally caused me to hit send on the window I was composing in. On 8/20/22 1:15 PM, Dale wrote: Howdy, Hi, Related question. Does encryption slow the read/write speeds of a drive down a fair amount? My experience has been the opposite. I know that it's unintuitive that encryption would make things faster. But my understanding is that it alters how data is read from / written to the disk such that it's done in more optimized batches and / or optimized caching. This was so surprising that I decrypted a drive / re-encrypted a drive multiple times to compare things to come to the conclusion that encryption was noticeably better. Plus, encryption has the advantage of destroying the key rendering the drive safe to use independent of the data that was on it. N.B. The actual encryption key is encrypted with the passphrase. The passphrase isn't the encryption key itself. This new 10TB drive is maxing out at about 49.51MB/s or so. I wonder if you are possibly running into performance issues related to shingled drives. Their raw capacity comes at a performance penalty. I actually copied that from the progress of rsync and a nice sized file. It's been running over 24 hours now so I'd think buffer and cache would be well done with. LOL Ya, you have /probably/ exceeded the write back cache in the system's memory. It did pass both a short and long self test. I used cryptsetup -s 512 to encrypt with, nice password too. My rig has a FX-8350 8 core running at 4GHz CPU and 32GBs of memory. The CPU is fairly busy. A little more than normal anyway. Keep in mind, I have two encrypted drives connected right now. The last time I looked at cryptsetup / LUKS, I found that there was a [kernel] process per encrypted block device. A hack that I did while testing things was to slice up a drive into multiple partitions, encrypt each one, and then re-aggregate the LUKS devices as PVs in LVM. This surprisingly was a worthwhile performance boost. Just curious if that speed is normal or not. I suspect that your drive is FAR more the bottleneck than the encryption itself is. There is a chance that the encryption's access pattern is exascerbating a drive performance issue. Thoughts? Conceptually working in 512 B blocks on a drive that is natively 4 kB sectors. Thus causing the drive to do lots of extra work to account for the other seven 512 B blocks in a 4 kB sector. P. S. The pulled drive I bought had like 60 hours on it. Dang near new. :-) -- Grant. . . . unix || die
Re: [gentoo-user] VirtualBox question on Thinkpad laptop
On 8/20/22 12:30 AM, Walter Dnes wrote: Long-story-short; I run ArcaOS (backwards compatable OS/2 successor) as a guest on QEMU on my desktop. Aside: Is ArcaOS really a different version of OS/2? Or is it still 4.x with patches and updated drivers? I saw extremely little difference, other than eye candy / included open source packages, between IBM OS/2 Warp 4.5x, eComm Server, and ArcaOS. Further Aside: I run anything in the above to be able to drive my P/390-E PCI card. The Lenovo Thinkpad has the "vmx" cpu flag, so QEMU is theoretically doable. But the mouse is extremely flakey, to the point of unusability, under QEMU on the Thinkpad. I've tried various tweaks, but no luck. I "asked Mr. Google", but only found other people with the same problem... and no solution. This sounds extremely reminiscent of guest OS driver / utility integration, or rather the lack there of, when running OS/2 et al. in VM. Are there any booby-traps to watch out for? What I'm most concerned about is the default "qt5" USE flag. Is VirtualBox usable without the qt5 GUI? I've not fond much effective difference in the various hyper visors, save for driver / guest OS additions / integration maturity level. Sure, different hyper visors have varying maturity levels of the management utilities. But I've gotten all of them to do what I want. I prefer VirtualBox on stand alone workstation for lab / play thing and VMware's (free) ESXi on my server for things I want running months at a time (read: to continue running when I reboot my workstation to change kernels). I assume that since you're running ArcaOS, that you have support from Arca Noae. As such, I'd open a support ticket with them and ask about guest add-ons for various hyper visors. I don't know the current state of 3rd party guest add-ons for OS/2 / eCS / ArcaOS under VirtualBox. Hopefully they've improved since the last time I looked. Surprisingly enough, I think the best integration that I ever saw was under an *OLD* version of Microsoft's Virtual PC / Virtual Server / Hyper-V. Back when they still supported OS/2 as a guest OS in an official capacity. Perhaps you can run an old version thereof or extract the guest add-ons therefrom and use them elsewhere. -- Grant. . . . unix || die
Re: [gentoo-user] Getting maximum space out of a hard drive
On 8/20/22 1:15 PM, Dale wrote: Howdy, Hi, Related question. Does encryption slow the read/write speeds of a drive down a fair amount? m This new 10TB drive is maxing out at about 49.51MB/s or so. I actually copied that from the progress of rsync and a nice sized file. It's been running over 24 hours now so I'd think buffer and cache would be well done with. LOL It did pass both a short and long self test. I used cryptsetup -s 512 to encrypt with, nice password too. My rig has a FX-8350 8 core running at 4GHz CPU and 32GBs of memory. The CPU is fairly busy. A little more than normal anyway. Keep in mind, I have two encrypted drives connected right now. Just curious if that speed is normal or not. Thoughts? Dale :-) :-) P. S. The pulled drive I bought had like 60 hours on it. Dang near new. -- Grant. . . . unix || die
Re: [gentoo-user] Getting maximum space out of a hard drive
On Sat, Aug 20, 2022 at 3:15 PM Dale wrote: > > Related question. Does encryption slow the read/write speeds of a drive > down a fair amount? This new 10TB drive is maxing out at about > 49.51MB/s or so. Encryption won't impact the write speeds themselves of course, but it could introduce a CPU bottleneck. If you don't have any cores pegged at 100% though I'd say this isn't happening. On x86 encrypting a hard drive shouldn't be a problem. I have seen it become a bottleneck on something like a Pi4 if the encryption isn't directly supported in hardware by the CPU. 50MB/s is reasonable if you have an IOPS-limited workload. It is of course a bit low for something that is bandwidth-limited. If you want to test that I'm not sure rsync is a great way to go. I'd pause that (ctrl-z is fine), then verify that all disk IO goes to zero (might take 30s to clear out the cache). Then I'd use "time dd bs=1M count=2 if=/dev/zero of=/path/to/drive/test" to measure how long it takes to create a 20GB file. Oh, this assumes you're not using a filesystem that can detect all-zeros and compress or make the file sparse. If you get crazy-fast results then I'd do a test like copying a single large file with cp and timing that. Make sure your disk has no IO before testing. If you have two processes accessing at once then you're going to get a huge drop in performance on a spinning disk. That includes one writing process and one reading one, unless the reads all hit the cache. -- Rich
Re: [gentoo-user] Getting maximum space out of a hard drive
Howdy, Related question. Does encryption slow the read/write speeds of a drive down a fair amount? This new 10TB drive is maxing out at about 49.51MB/s or so. I actually copied that from the progress of rsync and a nice sized file. It's been running over 24 hours now so I'd think buffer and cache would be well done with. LOL It did pass both a short and long self test. I used cryptsetup -s 512 to encrypt with, nice password too. My rig has a FX-8350 8 core running at 4GHz CPU and 32GBs of memory. The CPU is fairly busy. A little more than normal anyway. Keep in mind, I have two encrypted drives connected right now. Just curious if that speed is normal or not. Thoughts? Dale :-) :-) P. S. The pulled drive I bought had like 60 hours on it. Dang near new.
Re: [gentoo-user] VirtualBox question on Thinkpad laptop
On Saturday, 20 August 2022 18:57:38 BST Walter Dnes wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 20, 2022 at 09:05:32AM +0100, Michael wrote
>
> > I've noticed the same problem with a MSWindows VM on a laptop,
> > but only when the screen resolution for the VM is anything other
> > than full screen on the host.
>
> Thanks. That clue finally got me going with QEMU, but there are a few
> head scratchers that I'll gladly ignore now that QEMU is working.
>
> Head scratcher #1) After a "native install" of the ArcaOS VM on the
> Thinkpad, the bootup on the Thinkpad screams about multiple missing
> drivers for ArcaOS, "Press Enter to continue". Meanwhile a copy of the
> install on my Dell desktop PC boots up just fine on the ThinkPad (but
> has mouse problems).
>
> Head scratcher #2) The "native install" of ArcaOS VM on the Thinkpad has
> multiple video resolution options, but it does *NOT* have 1280x800 to
> match the Thinkpad. Meanwhile, the ArcaOS VM I copied from my desktop
> (1920x1080 monitor) does have a 1280x800 option!
>
> Head scratcher #3) After struggling with the mouse, I finally managed to
> change the ArcaOS install (copied from my desktop to the ThinkPad) to
> 1280x800, and then rebooted the VM. Once I fire up the VM, it works OK
> with the USB mouse *AS LONG AS I DO NOT GO FULLSCREEN {CTRL-ALT-F}*. If
> I go fullscreen, the mouse goes super-flakey again. Since both the VM
> and the laptop screen are 1280x800, I'm missing very little screen real
> estate. Just a thin white strip across the top with the QEMU menu bar
> ("Machine View").
>
> So far, so good. If you don't hear back from me, assume that I'm
> happy with the way things are going. Once again, thanks for pointing me
> in the right direction.
You're welcome, I'm glad you got somewhere. TBH I don't claim this is the
right way to go about it, just the workarounds I have come up with after
trying different resolutions on the QEMU TianoCore EFI menu, then the MSWindows
desktop resolution menu and then switching back and forth between full screen
and the default VM window size. Unless I escape the TianoCore boot process to
select Reset, the window of the VM ends up being smaller than full screen,
inheriting the size of the TianoCore menu window, no matter what the
resolution of either the TianoCore or the MSWindows desktop has been set at
and the mouse is jumpy and displaced an inch or so from where I end up
clicking.
With VBox, while it worked, I had no such problems once VBox Additions were
installed on the guest.
Regarding the head scratchers with your ArcaOS it may be different the guests
graphics drivers and settings are made available/configured at installation
time, as long as the VM container can detect these from the host. Perhaps an
inherited full screen is necessary for the installation to assume the
appropriate window resolution dimensions.
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Re: [gentoo-user] VirtualBox question on Thinkpad laptop
On Sat, Aug 20, 2022 at 09:05:32AM +0100, Michael wrote
> I've noticed the same problem with a MSWindows VM on a laptop,
> but only when the screen resolution for the VM is anything other
> than full screen on the host.
Thanks. That clue finally got me going with QEMU, but there are a few
head scratchers that I'll gladly ignore now that QEMU is working.
Head scratcher #1) After a "native install" of the ArcaOS VM on the
Thinkpad, the bootup on the Thinkpad screams about multiple missing
drivers for ArcaOS, "Press Enter to continue". Meanwhile a copy of the
install on my Dell desktop PC boots up just fine on the ThinkPad (but
has mouse problems).
Head scratcher #2) The "native install" of ArcaOS VM on the Thinkpad has
multiple video resolution options, but it does *NOT* have 1280x800 to
match the Thinkpad. Meanwhile, the ArcaOS VM I copied from my desktop
(1920x1080 monitor) does have a 1280x800 option!
Head scratcher #3) After struggling with the mouse, I finally managed to
change the ArcaOS install (copied from my desktop to the ThinkPad) to
1280x800, and then rebooted the VM. Once I fire up the VM, it works OK
with the USB mouse *AS LONG AS I DO NOT GO FULLSCREEN {CTRL-ALT-F}*. If
I go fullscreen, the mouse goes super-flakey again. Since both the VM
and the laptop screen are 1280x800, I'm missing very little screen real
estate. Just a thin white strip across the top with the QEMU menu bar
("Machine View").
So far, so good. If you don't hear back from me, assume that I'm
happy with the way things are going. Once again, thanks for pointing me
in the right direction.
--
Walter Dnes
I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications
Re: [gentoo-user] VirtualBox question on Thinkpad laptop
On Saturday, 20 August 2022 07:30:01 BST Walter Dnes wrote: > Long-story-short; I run ArcaOS (backwards compatable OS/2 successor) > as a guest on QEMU on my desktop. The Lenovo Thinkpad has the "vmx" cpu > flag, so QEMU is theoretically doable. But the mouse is extremely > flakey, to the point of unusability, under QEMU on the Thinkpad. I've > tried various tweaks, but no luck. I "asked Mr. Google", but only found > other people with the same problem... and no solution. I've noticed the same problem with a MSWindows VM on a laptop, but only when the screen resolution for the VM is anything other than full screen on the host. The starting ritual to rectify this involves pressing Esc repeatedly as Tianocore screen starts to come up, then select 'Reset', which resizes the Tianocore window and when the MSWindows VM starts I use Ctrl+Alt+F to enter full screen mode. If I don't do this the VM window is small(er), the resolution will not resize to full screen even when the window is maximised and the mouse is sticky/jumpy and its real position displaced on the guest's screen - I have to guess where it will actually land before I click on anything. Other OS VM guests, e.g. Linux, *BSDs, Android, etc. do not exhibit this problem. > Plan B) According to the ARCA NOAE website > https://www.arcanoae.com/wiki/arcaos/installation-planning/virtual-machine-c > onfiguration/oracle-vm-virtualbox/ ArcaOs can be installed in a VirtualBox > VM, masquarading as OS/2 (I did say it was backwards compatable). > > Are there any booby-traps to watch out for? What I'm most concerned > about is the default "qt5" USE flag. Is VirtualBox usable without the > qt5 GUI? I use the Qt5 GUI on VBox which offers a very user friendly management interface. However, recently I am not able to boot MSWindows OSs. I think, but I'm not sure, some recent kernel settings have hardened (Spectre_v2?) and it seems the MSWindows OS requires access to the host which is no longer allowed. VBox complains about AHCI driver corruption, kernel and system problems and gets into a loop of trying to auto-correct whatever has the problem - but fails. I haven't tried reverting kernel settings to see if the MSWindows VM will be able to run normally again. I'd be interested to find out if there are any workarounds to get these VBox VMs to run again, but haven't had time to look into it. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
[gentoo-user] VirtualBox question on Thinkpad laptop
Long-story-short; I run ArcaOS (backwards compatable OS/2 successor) as a guest on QEMU on my desktop. The Lenovo Thinkpad has the "vmx" cpu flag, so QEMU is theoretically doable. But the mouse is extremely flakey, to the point of unusability, under QEMU on the Thinkpad. I've tried various tweaks, but no luck. I "asked Mr. Google", but only found other people with the same problem... and no solution. Plan B) According to the ARCA NOAE website https://www.arcanoae.com/wiki/arcaos/installation-planning/virtual-machine-configuration/oracle-vm-virtualbox/ ArcaOs can be installed in a VirtualBox VM, masquarading as OS/2 (I did say it was backwards compatable). Are there any booby-traps to watch out for? What I'm most concerned about is the default "qt5" USE flag. Is VirtualBox usable without the qt5 GUI? -- Walter Dnes I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications
