VirtualBox is garbage • Hacker News Board

ch0wn wrote: post #31

Spyro7 wrote: post #7

The link in the parent is https, try this regular http link if you can't read the article: http://lkml.org/lkml/2011/10/6/317

Or this if it still does not load: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:lkml.or...

Or this http://lkml.org.nyud.net/lkml/2011/10/6/317

Re: VirtualBox is garbage

#74

Post by tadfisher » Fri, Oct 07, 2011, 5:47 PM UTC

copper wrote: post #69

tzury wrote: post #45

The content of the article which does not work for most of HN. Enter your search termsSubmit search formWeblkml.org Date Thu, 6 Oct 2011 15:05:27 -0400 From Dave Jones Subject RFC: virtualbox tainting. The number of bug reports we get from people with virtualbox loaded are truly astonishing. It's GPL, but sadly that doesn't mean it's good. Nearly all of these bugs look like random corruption. (corrupt linked lists, c…

Honest question: is a strcmp really the best way there is to test for specific kernel modules?

Seems reasonable to use strcmp to compare two strings.

Re: VirtualBox is garbage

#75

Post by saljam » Fri, Oct 07, 2011, 6:03 PM UTC

I've tried vbox when I used a mac and couldn't get past the user interface. The gui severely limits what I can easily do with it, and it's just plain irritating sometimes.

Now I'm back on linux and kvm/qemu, and I'm much happier. Why are people using vbox over kvm?

Re: VirtualBox is garbage

#76

Post by cbs » Fri, Oct 07, 2011, 6:12 PM UTC

copper wrote: post #69

tzury wrote: post #45

The content of the article which does not work for most of HN. Enter your search termsSubmit search formWeblkml.org Date Thu, 6 Oct 2011 15:05:27 -0400 From Dave Jones Subject RFC: virtualbox tainting. The number of bug reports we get from people with virtualbox loaded are truly astonishing. It's GPL, but sadly that doesn't mean it's good. Nearly all of these bugs look like random corruption. (corrupt linked lists, c…

Honest question: is a strcmp really the best way there is to test for specific kernel modules?

Good as any for their use. Follow that the thread on lkml (there is a gmane link in the comments here somewhere) for more discussion on identifying taint-introducing modules.

Re: VirtualBox is garbage

#77

Post by gregfjohnson » Fri, Oct 07, 2011, 6:21 PM UTC

I have used VirtualBox on a linux host with WinXP as the client operating system for about three years, every day. I depend on it for work and have found it to be rock-solid and completely dependable. I really appreciate the contributors to the project. They deserve some love!

Re: VirtualBox is garbage

#78

Post by xentronium » Fri, Oct 07, 2011, 6:29 PM UTC

joelthelion wrote: post #70

copper wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: is a strcmp really the best way there is to test for specific kernel modules?

What's wrong with it?

strcmp (and many other string routines like strlen, strcpy) relies on strings being null terminated. Safe versions (strncmp, strnlen, strncpy) have a parameter for maximum string length.

I am pretty sure that in this particular case it is not passed any user input, so it's kinda safe.

Re: VirtualBox is garbage

#79

Post by garethsprice » Fri, Oct 07, 2011, 6:43 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #55

garethsprice wrote: post #26

Wonder if there's a selection bias here; VirtualBox may be less stable than native hardware or commercial VMs, but it's user base is also using VirtualBox for different scenarios than native users. I know I use VirtualBox all the time to try out "risky" behaviors that often end in a crash, because I know I can just roll back if it doesn't work out.

The issue is that virtualbox is crashing the host kernel, not the guest machines. And specifically that it's polluting Red Hat's automated bug reports from those crashes, and thus wasting QA effort. Being able to filter those out by the taint mechanism in the patch is important and useful information. Read the thread, it's a technical and process discussion, not a flame.

Ah, missed that, thanks for noting. Yep, that's messed up :)

Re: VirtualBox is garbage

#80

Post by vogonj » Fri, Oct 07, 2011, 6:44 PM UTC

one particular aspect of VirtualBox has pissed me off in recent days. the system-level debugger is complete trash; it totally fails to do even simple things like inserting working breakpoints. at one point I had to resort to dropping int 3s into my code wherever I thought I might eventually want a breakpoint, and even that doesn't work most of the time.

so I gave up on VirtualBox and switched to QEMU, which works significantly better.