Win10 Guest in Maui Host + VB 3D Accel + Nouveau gpu driver = Dead Maui.

[kdemeoz]

Win10 VB VM Guest in Maui Host + VB 3D Acceleration + Maui Nouveau graphics driver = Frozen Maui [Tower].

I have 2 VirtualBox VMs of Win10 [yuck]. They're not new, having been created back when i still ran Mint 17.3 KDE4 (ie, < Sept 2016]. I have not needed [or wanted] to boot either of these VMs for months until today, & all previous times i did run them, Mint & Maui were using the proprietary Nvidia graphics drivers. Relatively recently, as per https://forums.mauilinux.org/showthread.php?tid=24237 ,  I stopped using Maui's Nvidia graphics driver & began using the Nouveau driver [& i still am]. Both my old Win10 VMs had 3D Acceleration enabled in their VB Settings, & before today ran properly.

Today, being as stated the first boot of these VMs since i adopted Nouveau, i was shocked to discover that 6 out of 6 [it might even have been 8 out of 8] VM boot attempts caused my Tower's Maui OS itself to freeze, needing Hard Resets [at first making me think (wrongly), that it was more occurrences of the ongoing random fault as per the above linked thread]. After much investigation & process of elimination, i discovered / proved the root cause of this pain was the VB 3D Acceleration function being enabled in those VMs' Settings. Once i disabled it, both VMs were able to start & run normally & Maui remained running, not freezing.

This mess really shocked me, as it never occurred to me that one price to pay for my decision to revert to the Nouveau driver in lieu of the Nvidia driver, was that it would stop me retaining my previous long-term Win10 VB VM settings. Given today's 100% failure rate though, i can't draw a different [tentative] conclusion. Ie, i presumed this simply meant that Nouveau & 3D Acceleration are mutually exclusive.

However, in that other thread, specifically post https://forums.mauilinux.org/showthread....7#pid41397, this was said:

leszek Wrote:
Nouveau drivers are well capable of running 3D games aswell.

So now i'm a bit confused; which is correct?

Furthermore, whilst this might(?) be a VirtualBox problem, how is it proper / possible that VirtualBox is able to freeze Maui in this scenario, rather than simply abort the VM run?

[leszek]

Virtualbox might use some 3d function that runs unstable and freezes on your card.
I have a NVS210 nvidia chip and am able to run virtualbox 3d acceleration without any problem.
But I use the newest virtualbox downloaded from their website and don't use the one provided in the repository.

You can also try out if 3d in general is freezing your system by running glxgears from the terminal and let kt run for some minutes.

[kdemeoz]

Thanks for the fast reply.

I also use only the VB from the Oracle site, never the repos one. I always use the latest version, which at the moment is 5.1.14.

I am interested to try your suggestion of glxgears, but can you pls tell me... is this just a passive test / analyser, or is it capable of causing yet another freeze? (i need to know, coz if there's a risk, i would need to stop all my other activities].

[leszek]

Glxgears is a 3D animation running so it is active.

[kdemeoz]

So it can freeze my system again?

[kdemeoz]

Based on https://www.howtoforge.com/tutorial/linu...benchmark/ it seems that glxgears is not rated very highly these days [it told me i had ~60 fps, but i dunno if that helps me or not], so i installed & ran glmark2. 

Here's the results, albeit incomprehensible to me [but all the animations were v cool]:

Code:

Z97-HD3:/$ glmark2
=======================================================
   glmark2 2014.03+git20150611.fa71af2d
=======================================================
   OpenGL Information
   GL_VENDOR:     nouveau
   GL_RENDERER:   Gallium 0.4 on NVD9
   GL_VERSION:    3.0 Mesa 12.0.6
=======================================================
[build] use-vbo=false: FPS: 316 FrameTime: 3.165 ms
[build] use-vbo=true: FPS: 453 FrameTime: 2.208 ms
[texture] texture-filter=nearest: FPS: 420 FrameTime: 2.381 ms
[texture] texture-filter=linear: FPS: 418 FrameTime: 2.392 ms
[texture] texture-filter=mipmap: FPS: 429 FrameTime: 2.331 ms
[shading] shading=gouraud: FPS: 346 FrameTime: 2.890 ms
[shading] shading=blinn-phong-inf: FPS: 319 FrameTime: 3.135 ms
[shading] shading=phong: FPS: 273 FrameTime: 3.663 ms
[shading] shading=cel: FPS: 253 FrameTime: 3.953 ms
[bump] bump-render=high-poly: FPS: 204 FrameTime: 4.902 ms
[bump] bump-render=normals: FPS: 402 FrameTime: 2.488 ms
[bump] bump-render=height: FPS: 389 FrameTime: 2.571 ms
[effect2d] kernel=0,1,0;1,-4,1;0,1,0;: FPS: 254 FrameTime: 3.937 ms
[effect2d] kernel=1,1,1,1,1;1,1,1,1,1;1,1,1,1,1;: FPS: 132 FrameTime: 7.576 ms
[pulsar] light=false:quads=5:texture=false: FPS: 336 FrameTime: 2.976 ms
[desktop] blur-radius=5:effect=blur:passes=1:separable=true:windows=4: FPS: 122 FrameTime: 8.197 ms
[desktop] effect=shadow:windows=4: FPS: 190 FrameTime: 5.263 ms
[buffer] columns=200:interleave=false:update-dispersion=0.9:update-fraction=0.5:update-method=map: FPS: 245 FrameTime: 4.082 ms
[buffer] columns=200:interleave=false:update-dispersion=0.9:update-fraction=0.5:update-method=subdata: FPS: 279 FrameTime: 3.584 ms
[buffer] columns=200:interleave=true:update-dispersion=0.9:update-fraction=0.5:update-method=map: FPS: 262 FrameTime: 3.817 ms
[ideas] speed=duration: FPS: 322 FrameTime: 3.106 ms
[jellyfish] <default>: FPS: 198 FrameTime: 5.051 ms
[terrain] <default>: FPS: 29 FrameTime: 34.483 ms
[shadow] <default>: FPS: 283 FrameTime: 3.534 ms
[refract] <default>: FPS: 63 FrameTime: 15.873 ms
[conditionals] fragment-steps=0:vertex-steps=0: FPS: 363 FrameTime: 2.755 ms
[conditionals] fragment-steps=5:vertex-steps=0: FPS: 304 FrameTime: 3.289 ms
[conditionals] fragment-steps=0:vertex-steps=5: FPS: 366 FrameTime: 2.732 ms
[function] fragment-complexity=low:fragment-steps=5: FPS: 371 FrameTime: 2.695 ms
[function] fragment-complexity=medium:fragment-steps=5: FPS: 297 FrameTime: 3.367 ms
[loop] fragment-loop=false:fragment-steps=5:vertex-steps=5: FPS: 355 FrameTime: 2.817 ms
[loop] fragment-steps=5:fragment-uniform=false:vertex-steps=5: FPS: 361 FrameTime: 2.770 ms
[loop] fragment-steps=5:fragment-uniform=true:vertex-steps=5: FPS: 279 FrameTime: 3.584 ms
=======================================================
                                 glmark2 Score: 291
=======================================================

[leszek]

glxgears ist not a benchmark application. It is just a test for 3D Mesa Graphics.
60FPS is the refresh rate (VSYNC) you probably have on your desktop

As 3D is running fine it does not seem to be a general driver issue that freezes your box with the nouveau driver.
It might be still that some special 3D instructions that the driver says are supported for your card either aren't or will freeze on your hardware.
This is indeed not very easy to debug as it seems there is some other issue with your tower pc as it is freezing up no matter which graphics driver you use.
So there might be something else interfering aswell.
What you could try is installing another newer vanilla linux kernel. See this wiki entry with a lot of information on how to do this: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/MainlineBuilds
I would try using one of the newest LTS Kernels, like 4.9.9 first and see if it fixes the issue on your hardware.

[kdemeoz]

Thanks leszek

I assume you are referring to:
   

I read the Wiki, & basically became quite scared; i'm not confident of my ability to perform the necessary tasks correctly. I'm perfectly capable of following detailed instructions that i understand, but in this case there's a LOT of jargon that i just don't understand. Eg; 

Preparing to install an upstream kernel

First, if one is using select proprietary or out-of-tree modules (ex. vitualbox, nvidia, fglrx, bcmwl, etc.) unless there is an extra package available for the version you are testing, you will need to uninstall the module first, in order to test the mainline kernel. If you do not uninstall these modules first, then the upstream kernel more than likely will not boot.

What is an "out-of-tree module"? Two of its examples listed, vitualbox & nvidia, presumably apply to me given my graphics & sound cards are Nvidia, & i actively use VirtualBox with LOTS of VMs... If complying with this instruction [even though i don't yet understand it & have no idea what to do] means i would somehow have to remove my cards or their drivers, & eliminate VB, then i think i would have to forget about such a massive change to my Tower as being completely impractical. 

"need to uninstall the module first" --> further to the above, i don't know what this actually means, but it sounds very intimidating. 

I vaguely recall someone in the Maui forums, or the Mint forums, or both, some time ago mentioned a program [possibly by Tony George, TeeJee Tech?] that might help take me by the hand for a non-standard kernel update, so once i can make time i might search these forums to find the references, then try to download the program. --> oh, is this it? = Ukuu Kernel Upgrade Utility, http://www.teejeetech.in/p/ukuu-kernel-u...ility.html ?  Would this be a good way to do this kernel update? Pls bear in mind; i have previously done many kernel updates, in Mint & Maui, but never "manually", always only via either Update Manager or Synaptic. That is, i seriously doubt my skills & knowledge to do this job manually. Maybe Ukuu would be my salvation here?

[leszek]

What is an "out-of-tree module"?

Modules are basically drivers.
Out of tree means that this is not part of the linux kernel.
This includes nvidia driver as it is proprietary aswell as the virtualbox module for running guests (vboxdrv).

Two of its examples listed, vitualbox & nvidia, presumably apply to me given my graphics & sound cards are Nvidia, & i actively use VirtualBox with LOTS of VMs...

No problems for your soundcard or videocard they should run fine with the free drivers.
When it comes to VirtualBox you need the newest version from Oracle which usually is compatible with the latest stable kernel.
The version provided by the repository is mostly a little bit behind and might be not compatible.

oh, is this it? = Ukuu Kernel Upgrade Utility

Never heard of it.
I would not suggest using it.

What you actually just need to do is download all the deb packages of your screenshot that don't include lowlatency in their name.
Then you can install all those 3 packages with the dpkg commandline tool.
Example:

Code:

sudo dpkg -i /path/to/package1.deb /path/to/package2.deb /path/to/package3.deb

It should then just install this kernel together with its header and automatically create a new grub entry for that new kernel which will be booted by default. I will also rebuild the virtualbox module (vboxdrv) automatically and make it available for this new kernel.
The older kernels will be made available in grub so if anything goes wrong you can just boot with an older kernel by choosing it in grub and remove the newer upstream vanilla kernel.
Its really not that complicated and with the option to boot with an older kernel you don't have to be to afraid trying it

[kdemeoz]

OK, your words give me more sense of reassurance than i felt earlier, thank you. Is this a fair action-plan summary then?:
1. As i am using the Nouveau graphics driver already, i do not need to take any action here.
2. I also don't need to do anything with my sound card.
3. As i am already using the latest Oracle VB version [5.1.14, per an earlier post of mine in this thread], i do not need to do anything here either.
4. Download linux-headers-4.9.9-040909_4.9.9-040909.201702090333_all.deb
5. Download linux-headers-4.9.9-040909-generic_4.9.9-040909.201702090333_amd64.deb
6. Download linux-image-4.9.9-040909-generic_4.9.9-040909.201702090333_amd64.deb
7. Run your command [substituting the actual correct names of course]
8. Reboot
9. Presumably if i didn't make an error, grub will show kernel 4.9.9 as the new default at top of boot list. Select it [or let it auto-select via timeout]
10. Hold my breath, cross my fingers, stand on one leg, & see what happens.

If my above steps are ok, here's my final question for now... what happens if at some point in the future i decide to return to using the Nvidia graphics driver? [my guess for your possible answer is that i would need to wait til Nvidia release a driver for my card that is specifically compatible with kernel 4.9.9]?