VirtualBox Shared Folder With Linux 5.14 Will Open New Files Faster, Fixes "git clone"

[phoronix]

Phoronix: VirtualBox Shared Folder With Linux 5.14 Will Open New Files Faster, Fixes "git clone"

For those making use of VirtualBox virtualization and rely on the shared folder functionality via the mainline "VBOXSF" driver for exchanging files between VMs and the host, the in-development Linux 5.14 kernel has an important fix/improvement...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-5.14-VBOXSF

[S.Pam]

Good to see work on this. Hopefully we'll get support for virtiofs in the future.

[idcmp_]

Is this for Linux as the host or for the VM (or does it have to be both)?

[varikonniemi]

How is it possible it was originally merged in a state that breaks userspace? Is GIT or vboxfs at fault there?

And what is going on in kernel land when normal update is not reviewed in 6 months?

[caligula]

Is this for Linux as the host or for the VM (or does it have to be both)?

The driver runs on the guest OS. I still don't understand why Oracle provides their own guest drivers when the kernel already has them.

[Gps4life]

I had a problem on openSUSE tumbleweed, after getting a kernel upgrade, virtual box stopped working.

From a bug report I was shown, I know they are already aware of this.

With help from the openSUSE forum, now using KVM.

Guest failed to start with 5.13 kernel.

https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/20452

For other tumbleweed users, in the grub screen you can select the 5.12 kernel under advanced options.

[xorbe]

I found that I lost timestamp accuracy with vboxsf. Granted that ext4 has 1ns resolution, and exfat has 10ms resolution, but still, you'd think that 10ms would be enough that 'make' wouldn't have a meltdown. Maybe vboxsf rounds off to 2s like old FAT resolution was.

[elatllat]

I moved from vbox to kvm without issues, nice there are options though.

[bug77]

The driver runs on the guest OS. I still don't understand why Oracle provides their own guest drivers when the kernel already has them.

Probably because (for some reason), they need to match the exact version of VBox running on the host.

That aside, is VBox crashy for other people? Or is it just me? Running on Windows host, it crashes on simple stuff like logging out.

[iDont]

The driver runs on the guest OS. I still don't understand why Oracle provides their own guest drivers when the kernel already has them.

Oracle's own guest drivers are promoted by VirtualBox itself but at the same time are not allowed to be used in a commercial environment, so they probably make money with selling a enterprise licence equivalent.