Some applications start slow (Firefox, aptitude) on Linux guest, others don't

[mbrennwa]

I am running vmware fusion on my Macbook Air M2 (24GB memory). The VM gues is Debian 12 with the Gnome desktop environment.

Firefox takes a couple of seconds to start, then works normally. Also the apt / aptitude package management tools take a couple of seconds to actually do something after invoking them on the Terminal. As far as I can tell, most other applications don't have such a lag after starting them. Gimp, Inkscape, GNU Octave, gedit, ping, etc. behave normally. Running Activity Monitor or top does not show any high usage of CPU or other resources during the "dead time" of Firefox or apt during startup.

The VM has 12 GB of RAM and 4 CPU cores. I tried running the VM with more or less memory or CPU cores, but that did not change things.

Any clues what's going on, and how this could be fixed?

[Technogeezer]

I tried reproducing this on my Mac mini 2020 (M1) with Fusion 13.5/Sonoma I've been unable to reproduce. I'm running a Debian 12 VM with GNOME, 4GB memory, 20GB virtual hard disk, NAT networking,  3D acceleration enabled. 

Could you share details on what the host Mac configuration is, what the VM configuration, etc. Also could you post a copy of the .vmx file for your vm so I can compare it against mine to see if I can spot anything. With the VM powered off, you can find the .vmx file by locating the VM in the Finder, right clicking on it and selecting "Show Package Contents". A new Finder window will open showing the files that make up your VM. You'll find the .vmx file there (it has a file type of VMConfig in the "type" column.

Where do you have your VM located? Internal disk or external disk? HDD or SSD? APFS or HFS+ formatted?

Do you have any A/V installed on the Mac. If so, is it set to exclude virtual machines from scanning?

Do you have open-vm-tools and open-vm-tools-desktop packages installed in the VM?

Is the VM running with X11 or Wayland (is environment variable XDG_SESSION_TYPE set ti wayland)?

What is the virtual machine's networking type set to? Is it possible that you have a bottleneck with your network connectivity?

[mbrennwa]

>> Could you share details on what the host Mac configuration is, what the VM configuration, etc.

Host: MacBook Air M2, macOS 13.5, VMware Fusion Player 13.0.2.

Guest: 3D acceleration enabled with 8 GB memory, network adapter = "share with my Mac"

The vmx file of the machine is attached to this post.

>> Where do you have your VM located? Internal disk or external disk? HDD or SSD? APFS or HFS+ formatted?

On the internal SSD of the laptop, APFS formatted.

>> Do you have any A/V installed on the Mac. If so, is it set to exclude virtual machines from scanning?

Not sure what you mean by A/V. Audio/Video?

>> Do you have open-vm-tools and open-vm-tools-desktop packages installed in the VM?

Yes

>> Is the VM running with X11 or Wayland (is environment variable XDG_SESSION_TYPE set ti wayland)?

Wayland

>> What is the virtual machine's networking type set to? Is it possible that you have a bottleneck with your network connectivity?

The networking is set to "share with my Mac". To test the network bottleneck idea I ran a few ping commands in the guest/VM, and this did not show any delays at all.

[Technogeezer]

One difference that I see is that the vmx file seems to indicate that you're running trixie/sid, not bookworm. That's also borne out by the installation of a 6.5 kernel - bookworm stable is using a 6.1 kernel.

I'm going to install sid and see if I can reproduce.

[Technogeezer · Accepted solution]

One thought. This smells network related but not Fusion related.

Double check /etc/hosts and make sure that the entry for the 127.0.1.1 interface reflects the hostname you selected for the VM. A mismatch here between the hostname and the hosts file will cause delays in network IP address resolutions, which both Firefox and apt rely on.

[mbrennwa]

Ahhhh, indeed! I changed the hostname in /etc/hostname a while ago, but I was not aware that I also need to apply this change to /etc/hosts. I have done this now, and the issue with Firefox and apt/aptitude starting slowly is now gone.

It's interesting that I have changed /etc/hostname without changing /etc/hosts in the past on (non-virtual) machines, but never observed this issue.

Anyway, THANK YOU VERY MUCH for steering me to the solution!

[Technogeezer]

I've noticed this in the past (and I apologize for not thinking of this possibility sooner). There's something about the name resolution of the hostname in the VM that delays if either the hosts file doesn't have an entry or it can't be resolved from DNS or zeroconf such as Bonjour. Not sure if it's the resolver on the VM or the DNS implementation within Fusion.