VirtualBox broken on Ivy Bridge Macbooks after 10.8.2 and Firmware Update • Hacker News Board

Re: VirtualBox broken on Ivy Bridge Macbooks after 10.8.2 and Firmware Update

#51

Post by scraplab » Thu, Sep 20, 2012, 8:23 PM UTC

nettdata wrote: post #18

EchoAbstract wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be based on an upgrade to the EFI firmware, in addition to the 10.8.2 update. While I've got verified backups for the OS, I'm not in the habit of regularly backing up the EFI firmware, nor do I know how I would restore it on my MBP. Anyone got advice for backing up firmware on laptops to allow for roll-backs on breaking changes?

I'm not sure there is a way for an end-user to revert to a previous version once a firmware update has been successfully applied. If it wasn't successful, you could use the firmware restore CD that came with the box, or create the CD to do that, but again, that only works for failed upgrade attempts. I've had to do this once in the past, and the easiest way I could find was to just take it to the local Apple Support…

Just to confirm, this is only caused by 10.8.2, not the EFI firmware update. So you can rollback to a 10.8.1 backup and everything works fine.

Re: VirtualBox broken on Ivy Bridge Macbooks after 10.8.2 and Firmware Update

#52

Post by caycep » Thu, Sep 20, 2012, 10:15 PM UTC

chmars wrote: post #23

webjprgm wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can't really decide between parallels and fusion though In case you haven't seen it, MacObserver did a comparison of Parallels to Fusion to VirtualBox recently (on the Mac): http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/benchmarking-parallel... Their conclusion is that Parallels 8 is a bit faster than VMWare Fusion 5 and both are much faster than VirtualBox. VirtualBox doesn't have nearly the 3D support of the others, so…

Parallels Desktop ist more polished than VMware Fusion but more expensive due to a higher number of paid upgrades – those are about the essential differences in my opinion.

ah ok. I was expecting VMWare to be miles ahead since they are the 800 lb virtualization gorilla, but parallels imported my virtualbox windows box more or less seamelessly (save an automated microsoft phone re-registration) and some sales guy got in touch with me 12 hours after I downloaded the trial. Go figure...

Re: VirtualBox broken on Ivy Bridge Macbooks after 10.8.2 and Firmware Update

#53

Post by GraffitiTim » Fri, Sep 21, 2012, 6:48 AM UTC

From vbox forums, someone at Oracle:

"That said, I believe we're now far enough along to say that there will highly likely be at least a test build pretty soon. Certainly sooner than in two weeks..."

https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?p=236591#p236591

Re: VirtualBox broken on Ivy Bridge Macbooks after 10.8.2 and Firmware Update

#54

Post by blairwadman » Tue, Sep 25, 2012, 12:59 PM UTC

mitchellh wrote: post #15

igorgue wrote: post #4

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 :(

(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 s…

I've used VMWare for a while now, and it is indeed very fast. I've just started using Vagrant (thanks for creating it!) and love it, despite the slowness of Virtual Box. Good luck with VMWare support, I'm looking forward to that.