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Virtualbox 4.1.8 allows VMS clustering LAVC |
malmberg
Moderator
Posts: 530
Joined: 15.04.08 |
| Posted on January 30 2012 14:50 |
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Virtualbox 4.1.8 added the ability to indicate that the client will use an interface in promiscuous mode.
By setting this on the interfaces used by FreeAXP and SimH, I am able to create an LAVC on a Macbook laptop. |
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RE: Virtualbox 4.1.8 allows VMS clustering LAVC |
malmberg
Moderator
Posts: 530
Joined: 15.04.08 |
| Posted on May 21 2012 16:26 |
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While it seemed to work well at first, I started getting issues where the cluster would loose connectivity.
It seemed to be related to the network interfaces on Windows that were dedicated to the emulator suddenly stop communicating with the outside world, and since the FreeAXP node was the voting node in the cluster, the entire cluster would hang. I would have to reboot the Windows 7 VM to get the network interface working again.
I just recently upgraded to VirtualBox 4.1.14 and so far it is working much better. It has only been a couple of days.
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RE: Virtualbox 4.1.8 allows VMS clustering LAVC |
malmberg
Moderator
Posts: 530
Joined: 15.04.08 |
| Posted on May 27 2012 07:47 |
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I have had two cases of FreeAXP on Virtualbox 4.1.14 loosing network connectivity.
This requires rebooting the Windows VM to fix.
It looks like I need to either downgrade to Virtual Box 3.1.8 or convert it to two standalone nodes. |
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RE: Virtualbox 4.1.8 allows VMS clustering LAVC |
malmberg
Moderator
Posts: 530
Joined: 15.04.08 |
| Posted on May 27 2012 13:19 |
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The downgrade to Virtual Box 3.1.8 failed. Apparently I created my Windows 7 VM with a later version, so it can not downgrade.
A check shows a new version Virtual Box 4.1.16 is out, so installing it to see if it works any better. |
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| Author |
RE: Virtualbox 4.1.8 allows VMS clustering LAVC |
malmberg
Moderator
Posts: 530
Joined: 15.04.08 |
| Posted on May 28 2012 18:54 |
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After about 1 day of 4.1.16, one of the network adapters has stopped passing traffic.
Looks like either periodic reboots of the Windows VM or break the cluster into standalone nodes.
The cluster could rarely survive the laptop being suspended for transport anyway.
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RE: Virtualbox 4.1.8 allows VMS clustering LAVC |
malmberg
Moderator
Posts: 530
Joined: 15.04.08 |
| Posted on May 29 2012 02:44 |
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While other times I was not using the system at the time that the network adapter stopped functioning, this time I was doing a file copy over the adapter that quit.
Precisely, I have Cygwin installed on the Windows 7 host, and then have Cygwin NFS set up to serve files to VMS.
The VMS emulator has the disk mounted.
I was replicating a directory tree by just copying the directories from an unpacked curl tarball on the NFS volume to a local emulator volume. It got part way through and the session hung. Ping confirmed that the network adapter had shut down.
As I have changed quite a bit since the original cluster with Virtual Box 3.1.8, this issue may not be related to it being in a cluster.
I will also note that the Ubuntu VM running SimH has never seen any issues with Virtual Box 4.x.
I am using the Red-Hat Paravirtualized drivers for that interface to get the best performance.
I think that the next step is to change that adapter from the paravirtualized one to the default adapter type that Virtual box configures and see if that makes a difference when I reboot this evening. |
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RE: Virtualbox 4.1.8 allows VMS clustering LAVC |
malmberg
Moderator
Posts: 530
Joined: 15.04.08 |
| Posted on May 29 2012 13:46 |
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I tried to change the adapter type.
Windows created a new adapter, and would not let me name it the same name as the one that it replaced, so I named it VMS_INT2.
Then the Virtual Alpha configuration tool would not allow me to change the configuration, it would not list the new adapter. I could not get it to do so.
So I use wordpad/write to modify the config file. The change was not shown in the configuration tool. I had exited the tool while editing the .cfg file.
So I put the network interface back and rebooted.
The configuration utility would not allow me to set the network adapter back, and attempting to start the emulator complained about not finding the adapter name I hand edited.
I exited the utility and hand edited the config file, then the configuration tool could find it and the emulator started. |
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RE: Virtualbox 4.1.8 allows VMS clustering LAVC |
Bruce Claremont
Moderator
Posts: 623
Joined: 07.01.10 |
| Posted on May 30 2012 02:58 |
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Try re-installing FreeAXP. WinPCAP needs to find the new adapter. |
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RE: Virtualbox 4.1.8 allows VMS clustering LAVC |
malmberg
Moderator
Posts: 530
Joined: 15.04.08 |
| Posted on July 10 2012 20:38 |
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I put the network adapter in a comatose state by trying a compile from the NFS mounted source disk.
Then I discovered that the PUTTY terminal in the emulator, and it looks like the entire Windows GUI was running several seconds behind real time.
Trying again with current patches on the Windows 7 64 bit, and Virtualbox 4.1.18.
First try failed. The NFS_SERVER password had expired. I thought I had marked it as not expirable.
After using the local user manager in the control panel to mark the account to never have the password expire or allow it to be changed, I was able to start the NFS. VMS would still not mount it until I rebooted the Windows VM.
Looks like there still may be something in Windows 7 and Virtualbox and the FreeAXP that is shutting down interfaces on high network I/O, as UBUNTU with SimH has never been affected.
Will try to do a compile tomorrow again.
I may have to rebuild both the Windows and Linux VMs for the older VirtualBox to get stable again.
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RE: Virtualbox 4.1.8 allows VMS clustering LAVC |
Bruce Claremont
Moderator
Posts: 623
Joined: 07.01.10 |
| Posted on July 11 2012 05:47 |
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From Dave Hittner:
It would help to know what versions of software you are running.
OpenVMS 8.4 w/ TCPIP 5.7 and all TCPIP ECO’s up to the current ECO3 have some severe NFS client defects from the TCPIP 5.7 NFS subsystem rewrite which cause NFS performance degradation (by 10-1000X) and NFS hangs.
I (and others) have reported at least four major NFS client bugs, some of which have hot fixes, and some of which are still being addressed by OpenVMS engineering.
I’d suggest moving the NFS-based files to a local disk and retrying the operation.
There may be something to his comment that the system time is off, which could be a symptom of high virtual host I/O denying processing time to the virtual systems.
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RE: Virtualbox 4.1.8 allows VMS clustering LAVC |
malmberg
Moderator
Posts: 530
Joined: 15.04.08 |
| Posted on July 12 2012 14:52 |
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I am running AXPVMS 8.3, idle 1.1, TCPIP V5.6-9.
I made no comment about system time being off. Character echo from putty was about 10 seconds before I rebooted the emulator. The dropbox.com application was also very far behind in reporting updates.
But now that you mentioned time, I do see that the cluster and the Windows VM are not in agreement on time.
I fixed the time and did the search again in a subprocess. It hung as before.
I have always had problems with VMS 8.3 alpha on the emulator doing DCL searches of text files on NFS volumes.
But at this point, I have not lost the cluster, just that subprocess, which is easily killed.
The reason for the NFS volumes is that the dropbox.com application is keeping the directories backed up and I also have two other VMS systems that are not in the cluster that are also doing builds off of those directories.
I have not upgraded this system to 8.4 as I want to have an 8.3 system to compare changes in the API behavior.
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RE: Virtualbox 4.1.8 allows VMS clustering LAVC |
malmberg
Moderator
Posts: 530
Joined: 15.04.08 |
| Posted on November 13 2012 12:48 |
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The configuration is now Virtualbox 4.2.4 r81684 on OS-X 10.6.8\ 4 CPU.
The Windows VM is Window 7 64 bit, 4 CPU.
FreeAXP 2.2.1.453
As soon as I tried doing major NFS transfers, the network interface on Windows used by the emulator stopped passing traffic until the Windows VM was rebooted.
I changed the the network adapter on that was hanging on the Windows VM from being the paravirtualized driver (virtio-net) to be the "Intel PRO/1000 MT Server (82545)", and adjusted the FreeAXP configuration file to use it.
This is less efficient than using the paravirtualized driver.
Now though, driver is not shutting down. Occasionally I am getting a per-process NFS hang, but other processes still have access through the network interface.
So there is an issue with VirtualBox and the paravirtualized driver Windows Driver that can be triggered using VMS 8.3 TCPIP 5.6-9 on FreeAXP.
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| Author |
RE: Virtualbox 4.1.8 allows VMS clustering LAVC |
malmberg
Moderator
Posts: 530
Joined: 15.04.08 |
| Posted on December 27 2012 16:05 |
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Just upgraded to Virtualbox 4.2.6.
As a note, the upgrade of the Virtualbox guest additions was broken in 4.2.4 and is still broken in 4.2.6.
You will need to:
su
sh /opt/vBoxGuestAdditions/uninstall.sh
Before you can install the virtualbox guest additions.
The new Ubuntu UI is a pain to use. I will probably replacing that VM with Scientific Linux in the future.
Still using the emulated drivers on Windows, as there was nothing in the changelog for 4.2.6 that the paravirtualized Windows Drivers were fixed. This makes Windows networking less efficient on Windows virtualbox guests than it should be. |
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| Author |
RE: Virtualbox 4.1.8 allows VMS clustering LAVC |
brad
Member
Posts: 134
Location: Hopedale, MA USA
Joined: 15.12.05 |
| Posted on December 28 2012 00:35 |
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malmberg wrote:
Just upgraded to Virtualbox 4.2.6.
[...]
The new Ubuntu UI is a pain to use. I will probably replacing that VM with Scientific Linux in the future.
Thanks for this Virtualbox thread; I've been following it with interest.
On a side note, a "more compatible" alternative to Ubuntu is Linux Mint. The Cinnamon UI is much less annoying/buggy, and Mate brings us back to the "old" Gnome interface so many of us know and love. : - )
[...] |
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| Author |
RE: Virtualbox 4.1.8 allows VMS clustering LAVC |
malmberg
Moderator
Posts: 530
Joined: 15.04.08 |
| Posted on December 29 2012 13:38 |
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The choice of Linux is driven by two factors:
1. Something with paravirtualized driver support. When I started this, the Red Hat variants were not well supported and someone at $dayjob recommended Ubuntu, which did have paravirtualization support.
2. $dayjob is now using Scientific Linux quite a bit, so it is a common environment for me.
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