VirtualBox broken on Ivy Bridge Macbooks after 10.8.2 and Firmware Update (opens in new tab)

(Vagrant creator here)

Ugh. This is a pretty bad situation. I took a look at the VirtualBox Darwin driver source code as well as the relevant method in the Darwin kernel (`host_vmxon`), and I can't see a workaround that I can meaningfully or confidently contribute. I'm hoping for a quick turnaround by Oracle or Apple on something here. :(

For the future, I've been working on VMWare support for some time now, and it should be ready in the next few months. These sorts of problems will be mitigated then by saying "oh, well you can just use Vagrant with X instead for now" (where X is some other virtualization layer).

For now, I'm sorry, I don't think there is anything I can do here.

Just revert back to the backup you took right before you did the upgrade.

You DID do a backup, didn't you? You HAVE tested that your backups are working, by doing a complete recovery with them, right?

Right? ;)

My personal philosophy is to be cutting edge on my personal/hobby gear (like the last gen MB Pro I keep for, ah, movies and such), but not to do ANY same-day updates on anything even remotely required for work. That shit stays behind the times but reliable for paying the bills.

After I've seen the upgrades working in the wild for a week or two, and I have verified that all the stuff I need actually works like I need it to, THEN I'll do the upgrade on my work box. After backing it up, of course. Hell, I even have a text file with search phrases and forum URLs for the software I need to have working to make it easy and ensure I don't miss anything.

Call me crazy, but I've learned that lesson the hard way.

Is there a discussion with details on the issue? Parallels and VMWare release new versions all the time for compatibility issues, they just fix them before the update comes so their new version is ready. Should VirtualBox just fix the bug on their side, or is this really an Apple issue?

You have Linux/Ubuntu development envinroment, right? Why do you use it in a VM on a Mac in the first place?

Why not just using a fast desktop with a couple of monitors at your workplace? And ssh/xterm to it, if you need to work remotely?

I'd be interested in knowing whether this is genuinely a bug on Apple's side or whether it's something that VirtualBox should have been aware of. It sounds like a bug, but if there's an issue with virtualization surely VMWare and Parallels would also have broken functionality as well.

> I didn't have to deal with weird homebrew issues...

Just out of curiosity: which weird issues? The only "issues" I had involved installing XQuartz, and chowning /usr/local/ back to me[1]

[1]: http://robots.thoughtbot.com/post/27985816073/the-hitchhiker...

For what it's worth, I just updated to 4.1.22 on such a machine and a snapshotted VM resumed without any trouble.

Edit: And then also to 4.2.0 without trouble.

The other thing you get with Fusion (and Parallels, but not Virtual Box) is decent performance; in my office we're all running Ubuntu in Fusion on OSX - we were running Virtual Box until we realised our unit tests ran in half the time under Fusion.

But that's pretty much what I'd expect from two companies in the business of virtualisation, versus one behemoth who really doesn't care - particularly if they're not making a significant slice of revenue (or any?) from it.

A main reason many of us use Virtualbox is because of Vagrant. If the same thing was easily possible (Is it?) with Parallels or VMWare we'd use those exclusively. I have licenses for both and use Parallels for any Windows-required work.

https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/10965 indicates that it's the Ivy Bridge skus, so I think your 2010 Air is ok. Caveat emptor: I do NOT own a 2010 MacBook Air.