VirtualBox is garbage

I use VirtualBox to run Ubuntu 32-bit and various other Linux distros on Win7 64-bit. No Truecrypt or Dropbox is involved. I have similar occasional issues with shared folders.

Access denied randomly when trying to overwrite files. Files renamed in the host becoming inaccessible from the guest. NTFS symlinks in the host appearing as normal folders in the guest one day and as broken links the next day. Terribly slow I/O overall. I used to bookmark and keep track of several bug reports on the official bugtracker, but I gave up because nobody seemed to care.

The only reason I still use shared folders is because it's still slightly less painful than CIFS/Samba.

It's an extremely complex piece of software that's free. I'm thankful to have it available and find it to work well.

The content of the article which does not work for most of HN.

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    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,
    corrupt page tables, and just plain 'weird' crashes).

    This diff adds tainting to the module loader to treat it as we do with stuff
    from staging/ (crap). With this tainting in place, automatic bug filing tools
    can opt out of automatically filing kernel bugs, and inform the user to file
    bugs somewhere more appropriate.

    Signed-off-by: Dave Jones 

    diff --git a/kernel/module.c b/kernel/module.c
    index 04379f92..d26c9a3 100644
    --- a/kernel/module.c
    +++ b/kernel/module.c
    @@ -2653,6 +2653,10 @@ static int check_module_license_and_versions(struct module *mod)
        if (strcmp(mod->name, "ndiswrapper") == 0)
            add_taint(TAINT_PROPRIETARY_MODULE);
     
    +	/* vbox is garbage. */
    +	if (strcmp(mod->name, "vboxdrv") == 0)
    +		add_taint(TAINT_CRAP);
    +
        /* driverloader was caught wrongly pretending to be under GPL */
        if (strcmp(mod->name, "driverloader") == 0)
            add_taint_module(mod, TAINT_PROPRIETARY_MODULE);

I run my startup on a MBP with multiple VMs. It's been a love/hate affair with VirtualBox, but so far I manage to live with the shortcomings. Can't argue with free. Tried Parallel early on when truly frustrated, but found it doesn't add much over VBox to justify the price. Here are a few tips that I live by:

1. Obviously, never put critical data on a VM not matter how stable it seems. Definitely have Dropbox installed.

2. Make it a good habit to pause the VM before you pack up and go or switch to a different network. When turning it back on, disconnect the network interface then reconnect.

3. When the UI freezes, you can rescue on a Mac with AppleKey+F6 (or a few other Func keys) to another tty console. Login there and reboot. After you get the VM back, VBox likes it when you do a proper reboot before you resume working.

4. Take snapshot regularly, definitely right after you just checkin a major chunk of code!

Thank you SIR!