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Re: Running VirtualBox VM host on ReadyNAS Pro

sander11
Aspirant

Re: Running VirtualBox VM host on ReadyNAS Pro

A couple of questions since this thread has picked up again.

1) has anyone else noticed occasional lags in virtualbox which have remained until a vm was stopped?

I've had a couple instances where the vm just dragged to a crawl and when I logged into the Readynas the %wa (i/o waits) in top as at 90%. Stopping (actually suspending) the vm and restarting it resolved this behavior. It may be because of the software hypervisor, but I was curious if anyone else has seen this.

2) how much has anyone really pushed this?

I'm pretty timid as I only went this route to keep from messing up the main Readynas config too much and for portability of other services. I started this when I had to factory flash the firmware and had to migrate my Squeezebox config which was pretty customized. Not wanting to be shackled to the the root OS or run the risk of undermining the whole situation I moved all of the add-ons except for virtualbox to a vm and it's been awesome except for some performance issues which I hope to address with a new CPU.

That said has anyone run more than 2 vms or a bunch of multi-core vms without melting their NAS? My CPU temp idles around 90 degrees with the mid 90s if there's steady activity and up to 107-8 under heavy load (if my Yahoo widget is to be believed). I'd be curious if anyone can sustain multiple vms with reasonably low temperatures.
Message 401 of 442
dsm1212
Apprentice

Re: Running VirtualBox VM host on ReadyNAS Pro

I've been running two, but not continuously. I start and steop them as needed so that are not always running. The interesting thing is that twice when I left one running for a couple of days it got into a bad state. When it did I tried to stop/start the services I was using and the stop command was giving me errors so, as you reported too, I just restarted the vbox and was back again. It happened twice. For what I'm doing I don't mind this behavior that much, but if I see it again I'll check IO waits. Could be a compatibility with the network drivers on the NAS or something.

steve
Message 402 of 442
b2thet
Aspirant

Re: Running VirtualBox VM host on ReadyNAS Pro

Anyone successfull with getting this to work on a new 516?
Message 403 of 442
dsm1212
Apprentice

Re: Running VirtualBox VM host on ReadyNAS Pro

Would like to update to 4.2.23 but I don't want to bollix virtualbox. Anyone tried it yet?

steve
Message 404 of 442
InTheShires
Tutor

Re: Running VirtualBox VM host on ReadyNAS Pro

dsm1212 wrote:
Would like to update to 4.2.23 but I don't want to bollix virtualbox. Anyone tried it yet?

steve


.23 T6 Beta didn't affect my Vbox setup, but I haven't gone final yet... I try it later on, all being well.
Message 405 of 442
pogi
Aspirant

Re: Running VirtualBox VM host on ReadyNAS Pro

Hi Matty,


great tutorial I tried it on my 4.2.23 and its working(readynas ultra2). I think you should make a new topic to keep your poston the top of the topic.
Concerning the apache step, I have to add manually addtype php for apache to recognise php file .
Message 406 of 442
dsm1212
Apprentice

Re: Running VirtualBox VM host on ReadyNAS Pro

I updated my system to 4.2.24 and there were a couple of things I learned:

1. You need to remove the links /etc/apache and /etc/apache2 to do a FW upgrade. The upgrade will fail every time with these links place. Just remove the links, do the FW update, remove the /etc/apache and /etc/apache2 directories, and restore the links. The files laid down by the fw upgrade were identical to ones you already have (if you follow Matty's instructions).

2. The GPL source locations for netgear have changed. This seems to be the right page: http://kb.netgear.com/app/answers/detai ... mmers-(gpl). I used the 4.2.24 GPL sources and had no problems.

3. I used the latest Virtualbox (4.2.16) and it works fine.

4. Not sure why but the phpvboxmgr config.php user/password did not take. Logged in with admin/admin and then used the UI to add vbox as a user. Maybe there were changes in phpvboxmgr?

Kudo's to mdgm for helping me figure out the apache link problem!

steve
Message 407 of 442
InTheShires
Tutor

Re: Running VirtualBox VM host on ReadyNAS Pro

dsm1212 wrote:
I updated my system to 4.2.24 and there were a couple of things I learned:

1. You need to remove the links /etc/apache and /etc/apache2 to do a FW upgrade. The upgrade will fail every time with these links place. Just remove the links, do the FW update, remove the /etc/apache and /etc/apache2 directories, and restore the links. The files laid down by the fw upgrade were identical to ones you already have (if you follow Matty's instructions).

2. The GPL source locations for netgear have changed. This seems to be the right page: http://kb.netgear.com/app/answers/detai ... mmers-(gpl). I used the 4.2.24 GPL sources and had no problems.

3. I used the latest Virtualbox (4.2.16) and it works fine.

4. Not sure why but the phpvboxmgr config.php user/password did not take. Logged in with admin/admin and then used the UI to add vbox as a user. Maybe there were changes in phpvboxmgr?

Kudo's to mdgm for helping me figure out the apache link problem!

steve


I upgraded to x.24 a few weeks ago, and had no problems upgrading the NAS (Ultra2+) firmware, and VBox is still working bang on, and exactly as it was before, (Including the error of not seeing all ISO's in my ISO folder. But this error has been present for ages I just haven't done any troubleshooting on it yet.)
Message 408 of 442
dsm1212
Apprentice

Re: Running VirtualBox VM host on ReadyNAS Pro

That's strange. Are /etc/apache and /etc/apache2 softlinks links on your NAS? Matty's instructions said to create those. If they are there then I don't see how it worked. The tar command to extract the new image fails every time. Unless an ultra2+ has a different install image that doesn't include those directories? The Pro-6 uses the x86 image. I thought the atom based systems would use the same one, but maybe that's not the case or for some reason those files don't get laid down on the ultra2+. The files it lays down did not change with the release. I believe they were these three in /etc/apache2/mods-available: apreq.load, auth_sys_group.load, and perl.load.

steve
Message 409 of 442
InTheShires
Tutor

Re: Running VirtualBox VM host on ReadyNAS Pro

dsm1212 wrote:
That's strange. Are /etc/apache and /etc/apache2 softlinks links on your NAS? Matty's instructions said to create those. If they are there then I don't see how it worked. The tar command to extract the new image fails every time. Unless an ultra2+ has a different install image that doesn't include those directories? The Pro-6 uses the x86 image. I thought the atom based systems would use the same one, but maybe that's not the case or for some reason those files don't get laid down on the ultra2+. The files it lays down did not change with the release. I believe they were these three in /etc/apache2/mods-available: apreq.load, auth_sys_group.load, and perl.load.

steve


Well, IIRC the only tinkering I did prior to installing VBox was to load up Python2.7, PHP5.3, PHPMyAdmin, and NZBGET8.0/NZBGETWeb1.5. (Inc' WhoCares? prepped LIbsigc++2.0.0 and LibPar2.0) My etc/apt would have tweaked and run apt-get update etc.


Message 410 of 442
dsm1212
Apprentice

Re: Running VirtualBox VM host on ReadyNAS Pro

Oh, I think his original instructions had the linking inside the php install instructions so if you already had php then maybe you didn't have the links. I'm not sure what the consequences are of not consolidating the apache locations. Maybe it's not necessary if you haven't had problems.
Message 411 of 442
sander11
Aspirant

Re: Running VirtualBox VM host on ReadyNAS Pro

What is involved in upgrading the firmware with virtualbox installed? Do you have to do the whole re-install or just the kernel modules?

I recall upgrading the firmware back when I ran vmware server and it "just worked".

TIA
Message 412 of 442
dsm1212
Apprentice

Re: Running VirtualBox VM host on ReadyNAS Pro

Honestly I went through all the steps again. Some of them were no-ops because it was already done, but after the update several commands needed to be reinstalled so I went through them all quickly. The kernel steps were definitely necessary. The images would run before that but the network was hosed in them.

steve
Message 413 of 442
sander11
Aspirant

Re: Running VirtualBox VM host on ReadyNAS Pro

Thanks Steve. I will have to review what the benefits are of the new firmware and all of those things as I have become accustomed to the whole situation 'just working' at this point so I'm not that eager to running the risk of more tinkering.
My only complaint at this point is sometimes virtualbox gets an I/o bottleneck which renders my vm unusable until the vm or virtualbox Service is restarted.
I'm not sure if upgrading will help this, but that would be a motivator for me. As I recently upgraded the CPU the prospect of running more than one cm has become more viable.
Message 414 of 442
JamieSinn
Aspirant

Re: Running VirtualBox VM host on ReadyNAS Pro

I get this error whenever i try to update and or install virtualbox
Server:/lib/modules/2.6.37.6.RNx86_64.2.4/misc# apt-get install virtualbox-2.1
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
virtualbox-2.1: Depends: libfontconfig1 (>= 2.4.0) but it is not installable
Depends: libice6 (>= 1:1.0.0) but it is not installable
Depends: libsdl1.2debian (>= 1.2.10-1) but it is not installable
Depends: libsm6 but it is not installable
Depends: libxcursor1 (> 1.1.2) but it is not installable
Depends: libxext6 but it is not installable
Depends: libxfixes3 (>= 1:4.0.1) but it is not installable
Depends: libxi6 but it is not installable
Depends: libxinerama1 but it is not installable
Depends: libxmu6 but it is not installable
Depends: libxrandr2 but it is not installable
Depends: libxrender1 but it is not installable
Depends: libxt6 but it is not installable
Depends: python2.4 (>= 2.3.90) but it is not installable
E: Broken packages

Can anyone help?
Message 415 of 442
dsm1212
Apprentice

Re: Running VirtualBox VM host on ReadyNAS Pro

You need to follow mattyshacks' instructions. I don't think you can get this to work just using apt-get. You need to build virtualbox yourself as he described on page 27 of this topic.

steve
Message 416 of 442
MattyShack
Tutor

Re: Running VirtualBox VM host on ReadyNAS Pro

The current guide includes changes and fixes for ReadyNAS 4.2.24

See "Update: Running VirtualBox VM host on ReadyNAS Pro 4.2.24"
viewtopic.php?f=35&t=72178&p=401213#p401213

Thanks
Message 417 of 442
Xaver
Tutor

Re: Running VirtualBox VM host on ReadyNAS Pro

Hi there,

currently my Pro Pioneer is running 4.2.17 with vbox and is quiet full (90%).
Will the OS reinstall work to reset everything to be ready for upgrade to .24 and compile vbox, without clearing the shares???
Message 418 of 442
dsm1212
Apprentice

Re: Running VirtualBox VM host on ReadyNAS Pro

Been weeks so you probably already got past this, but what is quite full? The root partition or your c partition? OS reinstall should not affect your data on c, but I'm not certain on the shares. Since os reinstall is used to fix configuration problems I'm not sure what it does with the current share configuration. My Pro 6 root partition is only 33%. You might want to try to ferret out with du where the space is being consumed so it doesn't happen again.

steve
Message 419 of 442
StephenB
Guru

Re: Running VirtualBox VM host on ReadyNAS Pro

OS reinstall resets the network configuration to use DHCP, and the admin password to the factory default value ("netgear1" on v1s, ultras and pros, "password" on v2s and OS6).

It does not change the share configuration.
Message 420 of 442
chirpa
Luminary

Re: Running VirtualBox VM host on ReadyNAS Pro

Can't run 64-bit VMs on RN516 system, the BIOS has Intel Virtualization Technology disabled. If you try to manually enable it, the system bricks itself.
Message 421 of 442
Hibtek
Aspirant

Re: Running VirtualBox VM host on ReadyNAS Pro

Hi All,

I was hoping someone could help with an Installation problem, all ha gone ok, but I have got to..."Step 2: Install PHP VirtualBox Manager for ReadyNAS"

but I am unable to download the addon from here http://netgear.tonidoid.com/app/webshar ... n=download

I also looked at viewtopic.php?f=48&t=44145 but that links me to Whocares page and I cannot find the addon there, either for sale or not

Can anyone point me to this addon, does it still exists

I'm a Linux newbie so its a odd shaped leaf on the track and now I'm stuck! 🙂

Thanks

Chris
Message 422 of 442
MattyShack
Tutor

Re: Running VirtualBox VM host on ReadyNAS Pro

Chris,

I've uploaded it to my Google Drive. Here is the link.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1y_OP ... sp=sharing

Matt
Message 423 of 442
Hibtek
Aspirant

Re: Running VirtualBox VM host on ReadyNAS Pro

Brill, thanks

I can continue now 🙂
Message 424 of 442
Hibtek
Aspirant

Re: Running VirtualBox VM host on ReadyNAS Pro

Well, something went wrong somewhere 🙂

Rebooted after installing it and updating it.....and got an email after the box rebooted stating "The paths for the shares listed below could not be found. Typically, this occurs when the ReadyNAS is unable to access the data volume."

Wow, I must of defiantly done something wrong 🙂

Its factory resetting now, all that was setup was an FTP server and nasinfo

I managed to mount the /c folder and get an updated config backup for the users etc.
Message 425 of 442
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