Installing of Virtualbox on openSUSE12.164bit breaks network

[maninred2]

Installing of Virtualbox4.1.6 on openSUSE12.1 kernel3.1.0 conflicts with wireless driver ath9k. -> Checked more than once. It always happend after an installation of Virtualbox to openSUSE12.1 systems.

The network rate is decreasing down to 120kbits from 700kbits and sometimes(between 10min and some hours the connection breaks completely-> only a complete shutdown helps. So there is something very wrong on you integrate your network in that of every host.

It´s with Atheros TP-Link 5008. When you want to have kernel logs of this(the upload to your bugtacker is limited to 400kb), you can look at:

​https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=709436

Create an account and you can download many many logs. The last which were attached there were in full debugging mode for ath9k, so I´am pretty sure that they can show you how to hunt down this hard bug.

[maninred2]

The special thing is that only the installation of virtualbox is enough to damage the network of the host. So, the start of virtualbox in the running system is not necessary and the network damage independent of the start of virtualbox and/or running a guest.

-> It must be related to the loading of the kernel module itself.

[Frank Mehnert]

The bug description is very incomplete and inconsistent. If this is really only the installation of VirtualBox, not running of any VM then I highly doubt that VirtualBox should be guilty at all and the reporter of the Novell ticket admitted that his network is unstable, even without VirtualBox installed. Things might be different if a VM is running and a VM is doing host networking or bridged networking but it is most unlikely that a pure installation of VirtualBox can cause any networking problem on a Linux host.

We are willing to debug this issue further if we get more evidence, not only such statements like the network is unstable but more unstable with VirtualBox installed.

[maninred2]

I know that it is unlikely, but is is like it is.

Without virtualbox installation and it´s kernel module the network works good enough.

With installation of virtualbox and it´s kernel module the stability decreases rapidly without virtulbox running. I mean not something like it could be or there is something and virtualbox could be involved. It is a heavy decreasing from 700kbit to around 100kbits(it´s alternating) with disconnections. -> I´ve reproduced it with complete system new installation and successive software installation.

You will have more evidence. o.K, but how? -> A workflow for what you will have would be proper. Give me that and I do.

[Frank Mehnert]

I would like to see some more tests. For instance, there are 4 kernel modules so it would be interesting what happens if you only remove one kernel module after another (first remove vboxpci, then redo your network test, then remove vboxnetadp, then redo the test and so on). If the network still does not work work correctly after removing all modules try the other way around. Don't load the VBox modules during start (edit the /etc/init.d/vboxdrv script to prevent loading the modules). Then load each module one after another and check how/if your networking changes.

[maninred2]

That will take a while.

[Frank Mehnert]

No response, closing.