So after being rather unsatisfied with Linux gaming, I’ve bought another SSD and installed Windows there, for dual booting purposes. But there’s also the option of Windows hosting the NixOS disk as a guest (with a raw vmdk). That’s easy enough to setup (create vmdk, check EFI box, add disk to VM) and kind of works, just 2 issues:
- The guest additions don’t seem to be detected (
virtualisation.virtualbox.guest.enable=true)
They are running though:
ps aux | grep VBox
root 111 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? I< 19:37 0:00 [iprt-VBoxWQueue]
root 595 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? I< 19:37 0:00 [iprt-VBoxWQueue]
root 596 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 19:37 0:00 [iprt-VBoxTscThr]
root 745 0.0 0.0 349604 3476 ? Ssl 19:37 0:00 VBoxService --foreground
user 1407 0.0 0.0 139856 504 ? S 19:38 0:00 /nix/store/j27zsksdmqag5n07rysjn7rj3smnhdld-VirtualBox-GuestAdditions-5.2.28-5.0.18/bin/VBoxClient --clipboard
user 1409 0.0 0.0 206232 3944 ? Sl 19:38 0:00 /nix/store/j27zsksdmqag5n07rysjn7rj3smnhdld-VirtualBox-GuestAdditions-5.2.28-5.0.18/bin/VBoxClient --clipboard
user 1418 0.0 0.0 139856 504 ? S 19:38 0:00 /nix/store/j27zsksdmqag5n07rysjn7rj3smnhdld-VirtualBox-GuestAdditions-5.2.28-5.0.18/bin/VBoxClient --display
user 1419 0.0 0.0 139988 2748 ? S 19:38 0:00 /nix/store/j27zsksdmqag5n07rysjn7rj3smnhdld-VirtualBox-GuestAdditions-5.2.28-5.0.18/bin/VBoxClient --display
user 1424 0.0 0.0 139856 508 ? S 19:38 0:00 /nix/store/j27zsksdmqag5n07rysjn7rj3smnhdld-VirtualBox-GuestAdditions-5.2.28-5.0.18/bin/VBoxClient --seamless
user 1425 0.0 0.0 206064 2340 ? Sl 19:38 0:00 /nix/store/j27zsksdmqag5n07rysjn7rj3smnhdld-VirtualBox-GuestAdditions-5.2.28-5.0.18/bin/VBoxClient --seamless
user 1430 0.0 0.0 139856 504 ? S 19:38 0:00 /nix/store/j27zsksdmqag5n07rysjn7rj3smnhdld-VirtualBox-GuestAdditions-5.2.28-5.0.18/bin/VBoxClient --draganddrop
user 1431 0.0 0.0 206580 2396 ? Sl 19:38 0:00 /nix/store/j27zsksdmqag5n07rysjn7rj3smnhdld-VirtualBox-GuestAdditions-5.2.28-5.0.18/bin/VBoxClient --draganddrop
user 1693 0.0 0.0 129000 2636 pts/0 S+ 19:52 0:00 grep --color=auto --exclude-dir=.bzr --exclude-dir=CVS --exclude-dir=.git --exclude-dir=.hg --exclude-dir=.svn VBox
Their version is a bit behind that of the VirtualBox host (6.0.8), but according to the documentation this shouldn’t be an issue.
- No new boot entries can be created: "could not sync /boot: Unknown error -1
This is probably emitted by this line and it seems to be a timeout. I can read and write files in /boot though - no idea where the issue is.
Any ideas how to fix this? I don’t really want to be running a Windows host, but this seems like a decent workaround if good performance in the Linux VM isn’t necessary …