ubuntu 7.04 in Beta 4

[chuwy]

Has anybody used ubuntu 7.04 in the new beta 4? I have a mini project going on in a ubuntu vm and before i upgrade I would love to know others experiences, what features of the new beta apply to Ubuntu (linux) vm's? I assume that unity is windows only, although i would be delighted if it was part of the Linux tools :smileygrin:

[HPReg]

Ubuntu 7.04 should just work.

Just for fun, consider adding vmi.present=TRUE to your .vmx file. While we haven't tested it whatsoever in VMware Fusion (we have done it extensively in VMware Workstation 6), it might enable the paravirtualized side of Ubuntu 7.04, making it the faster Linux distro in a VMware VM.

[admin]

Do you know how to verify if the paravirtualization is working?

[HPReg]

First, you should feel a huge speedup.

Second, I believe you can do 'dmesg' in Linux and it will report a VMI ROM for the VMware hypervisor.

[skapplin]

Where exactly is this .vmx file located? I cannot find any file on my system with a .vmx extension. I do, however, have Preferences and Config files located in /Home/Library/Preferences/VMware Fusion/. No extensions on either.

I did add the suggested config line to the above files. When I ran dmesg I found no information reported such as VMI ROM for the VMware hypervisor. However, there was an entry that stated paravirtualization had booted on bare hardware.

I can't say I noticed any obvious speedup. The lack of any useful benchmarking software such as the OS X XBench makes it difficult to gauge speed differences or make useful comparisons.

[admin]

The vmx file is located inside the vmwarevm bundle for the virtual machine (default in ~/Documents/Virtual Machines/your-vm-name-here.vmwarevm). To see inside a bundle, ctrl-click it and select Show Package Contents.

Before adding this line, I saw "Booting paravirtualized kernel on bare hardware" in the dmesg output.

After adding this line, I see "Booting paravirtualized kernel on vmi" in the dmesg output.

Since I'm not pushing the VM, I'm not sure it's faster - it does feel very snappy, but it was already pretty good and I might be imagining things.

[Tutor]

Ubuntu 7.04 works very good for me. Mouse jumping is fixed with a work around mentioned by etung on this forum. Overall speed and compatibility is great so far after one day. Seems faster than beta 3.

Unity is windows xp only at the time. Could be fun, but since I use Ubuntu just out of curiosity I don't miss it much. Needs improvement for windows anyways. Doesn't work reliably for me.

I added the mentioned addition to the vmx file. Seems snappy, can't say if it is faster than before.

@ubuntu:~$ dmesg |grep vmi

\[27038.313925] Booting paravirtualized kernel on vmi

\[27040.962752] Time: vmi-timer clocksource has been installed.

[skapplin]

Thank you. Made the change in the .vmx file. Dmesg does indeed now report "Booting paravirtualiaed kernel on vmi." The VM does indeed seem much faster. At least shorter delays loading Firefox and Evolution.

I guess I should have thought to look in the vm bundle when I couldn't find the .vmx file anywhere else, but the previous version I thought had it in Applications Support or in VMWare Fusion preferences. Thanks for your assistance.

[thully]

Running Ubuntu 7.04 in Beta 4 here, and it seems to be working better than native (sans 3D).

Why better? It's simple - all my hardware works without the glitches you see on the bare metal (i.e. wireless, suspend-to-RAM, trackpad, etc). Also, I don't think I could tell that I was running in a VM if I didn't already know. Already applied the .vmx tweak - that should help make it even faster... All in all, this is looking like a great product, especially for someone like me who likes obsessively trying every OS out there (I also installed Solaris 10 for kicks...)

[chuwy]

Thanks alot guys, that really helps. I guess i was just worried to upgrade or not since my vm is so precious, i dont want any data loss

Unity in Linux would be great too, I have a program that i run that i can only see if i run my vm in fullscreen because i cant resize the program window, so unity would of been great there.

[arraya-halim]

I've successfully gotten VMI/paravirt to work with Ubuntu 7.04's kernel which is 2.6.20, but I've had no luck attempting a custom compiled 2.6.21.4 to work. It always states its running on bare hardware. I've even loaded the Ubuntu kernel config, still with no luck. This is on CentOS 4.5/Trixbox.

I'm curious to try the dynticks/no_hz option in conjunction with paravirt to maybe even further reduce the 2.7% idle CPU usage from the 2.6.20 Ubuntu VM. Although, I'm thinking it may not make a difference because from what I saw in dmesg, paravirt makes the guest use the native host's timer?

[aanhorn]

You know, the jittery mouse problems corrected itself for me just with the upgrade to b4, no other action was required.

[admin]

Beta 4 tools include the xorg workaround.

[Tony_Arnold]

Regis, is there a list of current distributions that support paravirtualisation somewhere? I'm assuming that I can custom compile a post 2.6.20 kernel myself, but has anyone on your team tested other distros? Exciting stuff!

[HPReg]

Tony,

Nice to talk to you again! Currently only Ubuntu 7.04 has this support. Our hope is that when other distros see the benefits paravirtualization provides (try compiling Apache on Ubuntu 7.04), they will ship a paravirtualization-enabled kernel as well.

[arraya-halim]

I was able to manually compile Ubuntu's 2.6.20 kernel on my CentOS/Trixbox VM and it is now able to use VMI. I'm going to try Ubuntu's 2.6.22 from the development version of Gutsy Gibbon next. I was unable to ever get a 2.6.21.x kernel to work.

I compiled the 2.6.20 kernel by copying it over from a 7.04 system with the linux-source package installed, then copying the config file for the generic kernel from /boot, renaming it to .config in the /usr/src/linux-source-2.6.20 directory, then running make oldconfig;make all;make modules_install make install. Also note, you need the headers from ubuntu too in order to compile vmware tools.

[Tony_Arnold]

OK, so here are my preliminary results: Ubuntu was indeed nice and fast, but hovered around 45-50% CPU usage when idle (is this normal?). OpenSolaris was the winner - it hovered around 3% CPU when idle - completely amazing. Nice work guys.

[admin]

Ubuntu was indeed nice and fast, but hovered around 45-50% CPU usage when idle (is this normal?)

No, that's way too high, it should be more like 5-8%. Are you sure the guest is idle (check with top or some other process monitor)? How many CPUs is it configured for? Tools are installed, right? Which version of Ubuntu is this?

[Tony_Arnold]

It's a 1 CPU guest - 768Mb RAM. Nothing out of the ordinary - I have enabled vmi as listed in this thread, and run all updates.

It's an Ubuntu 7.04 Desktop guest - default install.

Inside the guest, the system monitor reports that the machine is using ~1% CPU. Top on the mac side still reports upward of 30% CPU usage - is there anything obvious I may have done wrong?

[admin]

Inside the guest, the system monitor reports that the machine is using ~1% CPU. Top on the mac side still reports upward of 30% CPU usage - is there anything obvious I may have done wrong?

No, nothing obvious... Do you have any USB devices connected? What's the idle host CPU usage when vmi is off?