Running VERY slow

[steinmeierl]

Sift is running VERY slow in virtual box. Before running any applications, just closing the terminal window takes 3 seconds (for the fade-out). My config is as follows:

---Virtual Box Config---

   -System

Base Memory: 15220 MB Processors: 4 Boot Order: Floppy, CD/DVD, Hard Disk Acceleration: VT-x/AMD-V, Nested Paging, PAE/NX

   -Display

Video Memory: 128 MB Screens: 2 Acceleration: 3D Remote Desktop Server: Disabled Video Capture: Disabled

   -Storage

Controller: IDE IDE Primary Master: SIFT Workstation 3.0 Core Drive.vmdk (Normal, 500.00 GB) IDE Primary Slave: SIFT Workstation 3.0 Cases.vmdk (Normal, 500.00 GB) IDE Secondary Master: [CD/DVD] VBoxGuestAdditions.iso (61.65 MB)

   -Audio

Host Driver: Windows DirectSound Controller: ICH AC97

   -Network

Adapter 1: Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop (NAT)

   -USB

Device Filters: 0 (0 active)

   -Shared folders

Shared Folders: 1

   -Description

None

---System Specs---

Dell Precision T7500 Processor: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5606 @ 2.13GHz (4 Cores) RAM: 20.0 GB 64 Bit Windows 7 Professional

[ekristen]

Sorry to hear you are having problems. Technically only a vmware version of the virtual machine ships not a VM for virtualbox. I personally will not use virtualbox because it tends to be more trouble then it is worth. I can say that installing inside vmware works just fine.

SIFT is just a collection of packages and files beyond that it is current just ubuntu 12.04. Perhaps virtualbox and ubuntu are not getting along with each other.

It's is possible that a package that is installed is causing issues but without any sort of error message or error logs indicating a problem it would be very difficult if not impossible to track down.

If you install ubuntu 12.04 in the same exact setup do you have problems?

We are moving toward 14.04 very soon, so please keep an eye open for that.

[morallo]

It seems to be a problem of Virtualbox+Ubuntu+Unity3D. There are many suggested solutions:

• Enable 3D acceleration. I couldn't make 3D acceleration work when converting the existing SIFT VMWare appliance to VirtualBox.
• Enable "Use Host I/O cache" for the SCSI controler (Settings->Storage)
• Disable Unity3D and use Unity2D --> I think this is not possible any more in 14.04.
• Try to create a VBox SIFT workstation from scratch (installing Ubuntu and using sift-bootstrap). This way you may be able to enable 3D acceleration.

However, if all the problems are graphics related, my suggestion would be to switch to a different and lighter desktop environment, for example LXDE.

$apt-get install -y lxde-icon-theme lxde-core

Then, log-out and in the login prompt click on the white Ubuntu icon close to the username (sansforensics), and choose LXDE. Note that you won't have the same apps in the menus, you will need to add them manually. For example, the default terminal is not the familiar "gnome-terminal".

Finally, you can try to implement other general tweaks for Linux guests.

• If you have the disk space, try using fully pre-allocated disks instead of "thin-provisioned"
• https://blogs.oracle.com/fatbloke/entry/speeding_up_your_linux_guests
• http://blog.jdpfu.com/2012/09/14/solution-for-slow-ubuntu-in-virtualbox

[morallo]

Just FYI, this seems to work much better in VirtualBox 5.0