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VirtualBox broken on Ivy Bridge Macbooks after 10.8.2 and Firmware Update

122 points| roachsocal | 13 years ago |discussions.apple.com | reply

50 comments

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[+] igorgue|13 years ago|reply
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 :(

[+] mitchellh|13 years ago|reply
(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.

[+] nettdata|13 years ago|reply
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.

[+] webjprgm|13 years ago|reply
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?
[+] dchichkov|13 years ago|reply
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?

[+] nicholassmith|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] zrail|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] roachsocal|13 years ago|reply
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.

[+] room606|13 years ago|reply
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|13 years ago|reply
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.

[+] jeffh|13 years ago|reply
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|13 years ago|reply
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.

[+] dorian-graph|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] qq66|13 years ago|reply
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.