pxe booting on mac os x xlient still slow

[wayne]

client mac os x 10.5.8 virtualbox 3.0.4 for intel mac

setup vb to boot from network(pxe) this all works fine but is very slow takes about 45mins to 1 hour to load our winpe image over pxe if vt-x/amd-v is enabled. if disabled take about 10 minutes or less.

network adaptor is set to intel pro 1000 bridged (still slow if any other driver and vt-x/amd-v is enabled). cannot even pxe boot if set to NAT.

[Sander van Leeuwen]

VBox.log please....

[michaln]

Of course you "cannot even pxe boot" with NAT - because with NAT, the guest runs on a totally different network with a different DHCP server.

There is a PXE/TFTP server built into the VirtualBox NAT component, but that uses static files on the host. See section 6.4.2 in the VirtualBox User Manual. Bridged networking is what users typically should use if they want PXE booting for their VMs and have a PXE server on the network the host is attached to.

[wayne]

3 vbox log files on my machine

[Robert Ciaccio]

same issue here. Using PXE boot on the Intel Desktop MT network adapter in bridged mode, here is what happens:

The initial boot menu after obtaining an ip address loads very quickly, I can see in OSXs activity monitor that it downloads the information for the OS install choices at about 240KB/sec. This matches up from what I can tell from the bytes received field in the session information dialog.

However, once I choose an OS to install, the download process for the boot files (and if I wait forever until it boots, the installation files) moves at a speed of no higher than 20KB/s.

If I choose the PCnet-FAST III adapter in bridged mode, the boot and installation files are downloaded at a normal speed (anywhere from 300kb to 1.5MB/sec). But I am unable to proceed with setup when the installer loads because the PE image does not have drivers for that adapter.

There is a workaround posted on one of the forums wherein you pxe boot using the PCnet adapter, then plug the cable in for the Intel adapter upon installation start. But this is still a bug in the Intel adapter.

[Aleksey Ilyushin]

calavera,

Your problem appears to be different from the problem of the originator. Can you provide VBox.log as well as the packet capture file up to the point where it downloads at 20KB/s in private mail to aleksey.ilyushin AT oracle.com? You can enable capture of VM traffic with:

VBoxManage modifyvm <VM_name> --nictrace<NIC_number> on --nictracefile<NIC_number> <some_path>

[Aleksey Ilyushin]

calavera,

It looks like your problem is more related to #6330. Please take a look.