Virtualbox 5.1.10 on Ubuntu 6.10 running on Mac Pro 3,1 incorrectly assumes hyperthreading

[howarth]

When running the Oracle 5.1.10 deb of Virtualbox-5.1 (5.1.10) on Ubuntu 6.10 installed on a MacPro 3,1 running on Harpertown processors, the Processor tab incorrectly assumes that Hyperthreading is available on that processor and shows 16 CPUs being available on a dual quad-core system.

[howarth]

text file of the output from

[howarth]

screen shot of the processor tab in Virtualbox 5.1.10 under Ubuntu 6.10 on MacPro 3,1

[howarth]

screen shot of the processor tab in Virtualbox 5.1.10 under Ubuntu 6.10 on MacPro 3,1

[howarth]

screen shot of the processor tab in Virtualbox 5.1.10 under Ubuntu 6.10 on MacPro 3,1

[howarth]

Sorry about the duplicate screen shot uploads. Google Chrome seems to be burping.

[howarth]

I should explain why I think this bug is so significant. The current behavior misleads the user into thinking that they have more spare cores on the machine then they really do. This is very important as I have found that setting the processors to 8 on a dual quad-core Harpertown MacPro 3,1 makes the underlying linux system almost unusable. If I am not mistaken, if this bug is fixed, the display should properly be showing the green recommended bar only extending to 4 processors and not 8 as it does now. This is a big deal as it users are likely to incorrectly set the number of processor assigned to Virtualbox on machines that lack hyperthreading support. Virtual box should be able to see this through a trivial check of /proc/cpuinfo under linux.

[frank]

I would like to see a VBox.log file of a guest you run on this VirtualBox installation. At the moment I'm confused by your description. Are you talking about Ubuntu 16.10? You mention Ubuntu 6.10 several times but installing VirtualBox 5.1.10 on Ubuntu 6.10 is most likely not possible. The VBox.log file will report the version and it will also report a few other configuration items of your box which hopefully will sched some light onto this issue.