tillkrueger Posted January 8, 2018 Author Share Posted January 8, 2018 And that speeds VM’s up considerably with a system like ours? Are we talking twice as fast when booting, starting apps, etc. or more? Or not *that* much faster? Link to comment
tillkrueger Posted January 8, 2018 Author Share Posted January 8, 2018 sounds easy enough...what's the speed gain you found, running your VM's off an SSD? also, have you tried a Windows 10 VM on your system and does it run much slower than Win 7, or about the same? 92%...screw this, I'm going to bed and finish this in the morning...thanks for your help, mon! Link to comment
JonathanM Posted January 9, 2018 Share Posted January 9, 2018 2 hours ago, tillkrueger said: what's the speed gain you found, running your VM's off an SSD? Easily twice as fast, I didn't benchmark, but I'd say 10x probably isn't too far off, especially when you are talking about a RAM limited situation. I don't windows 10. I have to deal with it enough on customers machines, no freakin' way I'd put myself through the torture. My daily drivers are all either debian, mint, or ubuntu, I only run windows 7 because I have some programs that don't have linux equivalents. Link to comment
tillkrueger Posted January 9, 2018 Author Share Posted January 9, 2018 wow, magnitudes faster, be it between 2-10x as fast certainly justifies the $150 expense for a Crucial 500GB SSD...can't wait to get that implemented! haha on the Win 10 comments...yeah, I am still traumatised by my years using Windows, before I moved my business over the macOS...I can relate to Win 7 better than Win 10, which I find impossibly congested and counter-intuitive, not that Win 7 is a work of art, but it beats me kludging my way through a terminal session...and my Linux experience is essentially zero, even though I keep hearing how satisfied I would be should I ever put in the work. Windows 7 is now fully installed and the remaining drivers installed/updated...gotta figure out now how the VM's network settings need to be configured to actually see my unRAID shares...so many questions...thanks again for your feedback! Link to comment
tillkrueger Posted January 9, 2018 Author Share Posted January 9, 2018 hmmm...upon shutting down my Win 7 VM it started to install some updates and warned me about not shutting down the "computer" while doing so...I waited until it was finished installing the updates and started to spin the "Reconnecting" wheel, which I thought to indicate that it had finished the update process and had shut down...just to be safe I waited another 10 minutes and saw that nothing had changed (still the spinning animation and "Reconnecting")...I then tried to shut down the VM from the unRAID GUI, but the green arrow remained...I then selected "Force Stop" (which I probably shouldn't have done), which changed the VM's icon to the red stopped icon...but now when I start it and try to connect to it via macOS "Connect to Server...", as I had been doing, the Connecting window just stays there and won't connect...for half and hour and counting...i must have underestimated how long the shutdown process actually takes. Did I just mess up my VM and if so, is there a way to fix it? so close, and yet so far :-/ Link to comment
JonathanM Posted January 9, 2018 Share Posted January 9, 2018 18 minutes ago, tillkrueger said: upon shutting down my Win 7 VM it started to install some updates and warned me about not shutting down the "computer" while doing so A fresh 7 install will have hundreds of updates to install, some will take hours since microsoft decided to de-prioritize the 7 update server cluster in favor of the win 10 cluster. (No proof, just my speculation based on behavior of the updates during and after the release of windows 10) 21 minutes ago, tillkrueger said: Did I just mess up my VM and if so, is there a way to fix it? Dunno, how are you connecting to it? If you are using the VNC socket on the unraid server, you should see some activity when you start it, and it should connect to a session, even if that session has a crashed 7 inside. Link to comment
tillkrueger Posted January 9, 2018 Author Share Posted January 9, 2018 I see...next time I'll keep my fingers off the button until it *really* shuts down on its own. I have yet to be able to connect via noVNC, not that I heard good things about it, so I always use the macOS native VNC via the Finder's "Connect to Server..." function. while I wait for my Crucial 500GB SSD to arrive, I'll set up another VM from scratch...I'd like to try Windows Server 2008 SP1...have you ever tried that on your machine, or is that not a recommendable Windows version for this old/underpowered a hardware setup? I have yet to try to upgrade the BIOS in hope of adding the other 4GB, so running VM's on 2GB is sub-optimal for now, no doubt. Link to comment
tillkrueger Posted January 9, 2018 Author Share Posted January 9, 2018 Server 2008 is a no-go...trying Win 7 again. btw, after my previous install I do have a question that may have been answered in one of the install videos: what needs to be done to see the unRAID user/disk-shares in Windows Explorer? Link to comment
tillkrueger Posted January 9, 2018 Author Share Posted January 9, 2018 sorry 'bout all the questions, jonathanm, but since you're the only person I know who also uses this mobo: the BIOS upgrade instructions for the C2SEA assume that I boot from a DOS bootable device...how did you manage that on your unRAID, or did you never have to update your BIOS? once I have my Win 7 VM running again, could I perceivably run the BIOS update .bat file from there? Link to comment
JonathanM Posted January 9, 2018 Share Posted January 9, 2018 1 hour ago, tillkrueger said: sorry 'bout all the questions, jonathanm, but since you're the only person I know who also uses this mobo: the BIOS upgrade instructions for the C2SEA assume that I boot from a DOS bootable device...how did you manage that on your unRAID, or did you never have to update your BIOS? once I have my Win 7 VM running again, could I perceivably run the BIOS update .bat file from there? I never updated my BIOS on that board that I can remember, if I did, it was with a USB stick, probably set up with rufus, or something similar. No, you can't update that motherboard BIOS from inside the VM, you must boot the board to a native DOS environment. There are tutorials around the web on how to do that. Link to comment
tillkrueger Posted January 9, 2018 Author Share Posted January 9, 2018 thanks yeah, I was reading up on that and found that a USB stick that can boot into DOS is the only way to go...found instructions for doing so on a Mac, which were quite extensive (if not that difficult), but the author also provided the flash drive image, which I downloaded and restored to a FAT-formatted USB stick, then copied the BIOS update files to it. if I can figure out how to get my unRAID system to boot from it, rather than the unRAID flash drive (ideally without having to swap out the unRAID flash which resides on a rather difficult to access spot on the mobo), then I am optimistic that I can figure it out, inshallah. Link to comment
tillkrueger Posted January 9, 2018 Author Share Posted January 9, 2018 Very strange and a bit upsetting...I installed a fresh VM with Windows 7, installed all the drivers and Chrome (bc Windows 7 Internet Explorer, in its infinite wisdom, won't let you render the page that allows you to download either IE11 or the Windows 7 SP1 update bc "browser version is too old"), then Windows didn't take any more text input for some reason (couldn't type into any search or URL field anymore), so I shut down the VM and while it was stopped renamed it to what I wanted its name to be (from "02 - Windows 7" to "01 - Win7 SP1"), restarted it, and just like last time, when I tried to connect to it again with either macOS native VNC or with the Screens VNC app, it wouldn't connect anymore. another 3hrs down the drain, it seems...I don't get why this isn't working more smoothly for me...something appears to go wrong when I shut down the VM and try to boot it back up :-/ gotta do some real work and go to bed, then try again tomorrow...but I can't afford for this to keep happening. Link to comment
pwm Posted January 9, 2018 Share Posted January 9, 2018 It sounds like it works the first time but not after you restart the VM. But just to check - will the VM work again after you do a full restart of unRAID? That could indicate that some hardware doesn't get properly reset when the VM is restarted. Link to comment
tillkrueger Posted January 9, 2018 Author Share Posted January 9, 2018 thanks for chiming in, pwm...I'll try a full unRAID reboot, but since I am not using IOMMU with my VM, is hardware even an issue? will report back shortly. Link to comment
tillkrueger Posted January 9, 2018 Author Share Posted January 9, 2018 did a reboot of unRAID, started the VM back up from the Dashboard, but still can't connect to it from VNC...bummer, after 2 days of installing Windows 3 times. Link to comment
tillkrueger Posted January 10, 2018 Author Share Posted January 10, 2018 finished another install of Win 7 this morning, downloaded the SP1 update (960MB or so), and since I started the update, about 3hrs have passed...the upgrade progress moved to about 60% in the first hour and a half, but it has been stuck there for about 90mins or more, not moving at all. in your experience, is it possible that this SP1 update can take many hours, maybe even a day, or is that unlikely? I should mention that this VM is running on one core and only 2GB of RAM, off a spinner, so that is definitely close to a worst-case scenario...if I ever get this VM to update and have it configured the way I want, I'll assign more memory and cores to it, for sure...that is, if I can get the BIOS updated and hopefully recognise the other 2x2GB mem sticks. Link to comment
NewDisplayName Posted January 10, 2018 Share Posted January 10, 2018 I did it like this: Install windows with 1 core (with multi core i couldnt install) Then enable all cores on your unraid. Why Windows 7? Get Windows 10, its 2018 Link to comment
tillkrueger Posted January 10, 2018 Author Share Posted January 10, 2018 Why Windows 7? - I really don't like what Microsoft did with Windows 10 - my machine is old, has an old core 2 processor and only 4GB ram atm (which will hopefully be upped to 8GB, if I can get the BIOS updated) but if this time around I lose access to the Win 7 VM again after rebooting it, I *will* try to install Win 10...that is if this Win 7 VM will ever finish the update to SP1 :-/ Link to comment
NewDisplayName Posted January 10, 2018 Share Posted January 10, 2018 What they did to Windows 10? Get Classic Start Menu... Link to comment
tillkrueger Posted January 10, 2018 Author Share Posted January 10, 2018 I shall give that a try if I can actually get Win 10 to run on my old system...bc it is the Win 10 UI which bugs me to no end...thanks for the pointer! Link to comment
NewDisplayName Posted January 10, 2018 Share Posted January 10, 2018 Yeah, thats why u install classic start menu.... I could be wrong, but i think windows 10 is the fastest windows atm. I let windows 10 Vm run from celeron.... performance like a real pc. (now i upgraded my CPU, was just tryin unraid with the celeron) Link to comment
pwm Posted January 10, 2018 Share Posted January 10, 2018 Classic start menu solves some usability issues, but still doesn't stop Win10 from making a $8000 workstation look like it's a $100 tablet. Link to comment
tillkrueger Posted January 10, 2018 Author Share Posted January 10, 2018 haha, I hear ya, pwm...not a friend of Microsoft either, by a long shot...but since I have yet to learn to first thing about using a Linux VM instead, it's the best shot I have at using a desktop environment to work with my unRAID data remotely. Windows always was and still is an abomination. Even the Amiga OS ran circles around it in 1989 (and it ran circles around the McIntosh OS and hardware too, at the time, arguably). Since the SP1 update progress bar hasn't moved a pixel in 3hrs, I'm abandoning the Win7 VM and will try Win10, though. Link to comment
tillkrueger Posted January 10, 2018 Author Share Posted January 10, 2018 what does it mean when I get this screen from VNC? I downloaded the official Microsoft Windows 10 ISO, as instructed in the setup video, selected only cpu 0, assigned 2048MB of RAM (out of 4048MB), created the VM, used VNC to connect to it, and whatever I do, I always get to this screen. Link to comment
1812 Posted January 10, 2018 Share Posted January 10, 2018 1 hour ago, tillkrueger said: what does it mean when I get this screen from VNC? I downloaded the official Microsoft Windows 10 ISO, as instructed in the setup video, selected only cpu 0, assigned 2048MB of RAM (out of 4048MB), created the VM, used VNC to connect to it, and whatever I do, I always get to this screen. it means you tried to use ovmf and not seabios. Link to comment
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