VirtualBox is garbage • Hacker News Board

Re: VirtualBox is garbage

#81

Post by joelhaasnoot » Fri, Oct 07, 2011, 7:02 PM UTC

singular wrote: post #28

I've had quite a few issues with it. 1. Copy + paste randomly breaks between host win32, client ubuntu32. 2. Random freezes every so often. 3. Seamless mode extremely unreliable, does not draw correctly. 4. Horrible issues with shared folders breaking io operations. I actually got a (trivial) patch into golang to work around this issue (!). This also completely breaks ido mode completions in emacs. 5. Occasionally sh…

I've definately noticed number 4 and 5. For my Windows Host, Ubuntu Guest, modified files work fine, but I have to remount (or reboot) for new or moved files... It's awful and makes me mad every time, but not much I can do about it.

I use a virtual machine each for my php and django apps, and use VboxHeadlessTray to hide them in my system bar. Works great except for painful upgrades of VirtualBox in Windows, associated having to upgrade guest additions and the shared folders.

Re: VirtualBox is garbage

#82

Post by antihero » Fri, Oct 07, 2011, 7:03 PM UTC

xentronium wrote: post #78

joelthelion wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Would be a pretty neat exploit to buffer overflow someone's actual kernel via a carefully constructed module name, though.

Re: VirtualBox is garbage

#83

Post by joelhaasnoot » Fri, Oct 07, 2011, 7:03 PM UTC

danudey wrote: post #58

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 post isn't talking about crashes within VBox, but rather vboxdrv crashing and taking out the host OS, which should (ideally) never happen.

So shouldn't the title be: VBox is crap on Linux?

Re: VirtualBox is garbage

#84

Post by ori_b » Fri, Oct 07, 2011, 7:37 PM UTC

xentronium wrote: post #78

joelthelion wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you haven't validated or ensured that your string is a string you've already lost.

Re: VirtualBox is garbage

#85

Post by munchhausen » Fri, Oct 07, 2011, 7:42 PM UTC

There are many voices in defense of VirtualBox in this thread already, but I will still add mine, because VirtualBox has been a great tool for me and I feel it deserves to be defended. For the last three years I use Virtualbox to run Windows and Linux VMs on a Linux host. Other than a handful of weird hickups of Windows XP guests, which can probably be attributed to the guest OS, I did not run into any major problems in what must be thousands of hours of guest and hypervisor uptime.

VMware Workstation, OTOH, crashed my host(!) system hard several times, which actually drove me to Virtualbox in the first place. Granted, that was three years ago, but I did not have any reason to give VMware Workstation another try, as Virtualbox works very well for me.

Re: VirtualBox is garbage

#86

Post by 1amzave » Fri, Oct 07, 2011, 7:59 PM UTC

antihero wrote: post #82

xentronium wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Would be a pretty neat exploit to buffer overflow someone's actual kernel via a carefully constructed module name, though.

A neat hack, yes...but probably not worthwhile from the perspective of an actual attacker (if you've got permissions to load a kernel module, you could just load one of your own crafting to do whatever nefarious things you wanted directly).

Re: VirtualBox is garbage

#87

Post by pbhjpbhj » Fri, Oct 07, 2011, 8:49 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #56

wh-uws wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run windows 7 with Aero effects enabled Virtualbox is wonderful. Does it have bugs and need work? Of course. What software doesn't?

kvm, for one. Not quite as featureful, and the UI is a command line (though there's the virt manager stuff that I haven't tried). But it's rock solid virtualization that never gives me problems. I think people are misunderstanding this thread. This is a kernel developers thread, where Dave Jones is complaining that virtualbox is the source of too much random corruption and arbitrary crashes in the kernel, and he's su…

>"No one is flaming about it vs. vmware or whatever, or telling you what to use."

Well saying virtualbox is garbage is pretty much flaming. It doesn't bother me but I imagine those working on virtualbox won't exactly be happy about it.

Re: VirtualBox is garbage

#88

Post by Blunt » Fri, Oct 07, 2011, 8:52 PM UTC

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…

funny is how they bitch about virtualbox and then their own dam site is down at the same time. A bit of the pot calling the kettle black?

Re: VirtualBox is garbage

#89

Post by Confusion » Fri, Oct 07, 2011, 9:07 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #61

sherr wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"kvm, for one." Surely you're not saying KVM is bug free? Looks like it. That's almost certainly wrong.

I am surely not saying kvm is bug free. I am, however, saying it's much better than virtualbox.

Can you give a few reasons from your own experience? I found it much, much easier to get Windows XP sound and USB passthrough working in virtualbox than in kvm.

Re: VirtualBox is garbage

#90

Post by aquayellow » Fri, Oct 07, 2011, 9:29 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #61

sherr wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"kvm, for one." Surely you're not saying KVM is bug free? Looks like it. That's almost certainly wrong.

I am surely not saying kvm is bug free. I am, however, saying it's much better than virtualbox.

No it's not. It has its own set of problems. And bugs too! KVM has its pluses too, I agree, it's a VMM in kernel mode which apparently makes it faster, it is very non-intrusive to the rest of the kernel and hence got readily accepted upstream and so some might argue in that sense that it's better. But even though I have been hacking into KVM recently, for running a VM at home on my laptop/PC, I will always opt for VirtualBox for its simple ease of usage.