VirtualBox shared folders freeze under stress - [Solved]

[anomaly65]

Hi all,

I've got a couple win7 clients under virtualbox on sabayon hosts. Seems there's an error in vbox that's re-appeared where the shared folders (from the host) disappear if you put much I/O stress on copying/moving/etc files/folders from the shares. The problem is described in the ticket below:

https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/15662

So, basically, to get around that, I've masked out the newer (>5.0.20-r1) from being installed. 5.0.20 works just fine, and doesn't present that error. I masked them like so:

In file /etc/entropy/packages/package.mask I added the following entries (I'm running a 4.6 kernel, but other kernels don't fix the problem, I've tried different versions without fixing the underlying vbox problem).

Code: Select all

# 2016-10-10 mask newer virtualbox until share freeze issue fixed -- Ticket #15662
>app-emulation/virtualbox-bin-5.0.20.106931
>x11-drivers/xf86-video-virtualbox-5.0.20-r1#4.6.0-sabayon
>app-emulation/virtualbox-guest-additions-5.0.20#4.6.0-sabayon
>app-emulation/virtualbox-modules-5.0.20#4.6.0-sabayon


Install the matching virtualbox-modules and guest-additions for your kernel, and the older (I fortunately kept my files, perhaps this could be added back to the repositories until the ticket is fixed??) virtualbox-bin and all should be ok.

Like so (for the version I had a file still in the packages downloaded):

Code: Select all

equo install /var/lib/entropy/client/packages/packages-nonfree/amd64/5/app-emulation/app-emulation:virtualbox-bin-5.0.20.106931.3eb163127b7b45ad7376fb4802e4ee3b7d48e186~0.tbz2
equo install app-emulation/virtualbox-modules-5.0.20#4.6.0-sabayon app-emulation/virtualbox-guest-additions-5.0.20#4.6.0-sabayon


Hope that helps anyone dealing with similar issues, it's been working for me so far!

Good luck,
andy

EDIT, More details from vbox ticket in case these help.

From VirtualBox Ticket #15662 which very closely matches my experience including windows 7 client, etc; different software project of course:

Description
I have a Windows 7 development box for my main project. I use shared folders to build the release executable (Delphi code, Git, Finalbuilder to create the installation package).

When I start the build under VBox 5.1.2, at a point in time, something freeze. The shared folders seems "disconnected" (visible from the windows explorer but not browseable anymore). And I can't shutdown the guest OS. Have to kill it from VirtualBox Manager GUI (or by clicking the "close" button)

Host is Windows 10 1607 v14388.0 Guest is Windows 7 Pro (updates applied)

With VirtualBox 5.0.26 (and below) it works. With VirtualBox 5.1.2 it fails even with Guest Additions 5.0.26.

[joost]

I don't fully understand what your problem is here. latest app-emulation/virtualbox-modules in Entropy is app-emulation/virtualbox-modules-5.1.4 , you have a problem with that?

[anomaly65]

Joost, thanks very much for your help, always greatly appreciated!!

I added more details in original message which may be of assistance. It's an upstream problem with VirtualBox, but there are workarounds as I've basically described in same message.

I just had to go with an older version I had of virtualbox-bin/modules/etc in my local entropy library folder.

The newer versions seem to have the problem including 5.14, if you access a lot of files, or move/copy/etc from the shared folders from the host, those "disks" disappear as the ticket from virtualbox indicates. For example, if you copy a 1 gigabyte file from or to one of those shared folders, that disk may (very likely) disappear. It's a bug virtualbox is aware of according to the ticket listed.

I moved back until I found a version that didn't have dependencies that pulled in newer virtualbox-modules. The 5.0.x series seems unaffected. Hope that helps.

Cheers,
andy

[anomaly65]

upstream update version 5.1.12 resolves problem of shared folders (from host) freezing. Testing indicates problem resolved as noted in virtualbox release notes as well.