Whonix VirtualBox 14.0.0.6.9 Release Candidate 2 – Testers Wanted!

Originally published at: News - Whonix Forum

Download links can be found here:
https://www.whonix.org/wiki/VirtualBox_Testers_Only_Version

Testers Wanted!

Release Notes:
https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Whonix_Release_Notes#Whonix_14

The upgrade process is very smooth, and everything I have tried so far seems to work as expected.
(One minor issue on the upgrade process, with an error relating to exim which I ignored. Since this is removed in the purge afterwards it’s safe to ignore.)
On the documentation front, everything was fine - however I didn’t seem to have the apparmor file I was instructed to remove. Again,minor importance.

So a good upgrade experience and working well.

2 Likes

Did a fresh install and update, can confirm that Tor Browser Downloader is working.

Still get the KdeSudo message upon startup, though everything seems to be working fine.

1 Like
  • Whonix GW & Whonix WS comes by default with 4 CPUs on :scream: ? should be changed to 1 (Settings - System - Processor - Processors(s) => change it to 1)

  • Whonix GW and Whonix WS the Floppy + Optical are on by default. They need to be disabled for enhanced security.
    (Settings - System - Motherboard - Boot Order - :x: :floppy_disk: Floppy & :cd: Optical)

  • Whonix GW Audio should be disabled by default :mute:.
    (Settings - Audio - :x: Enable Audio)

1 Like

Why?

Please create tickets.

how many cores u want to give to a vm? 1 or 2 Max not more.

i have i7 cpu it has 8 cores if i will give 4 to ws and 4 to gw then how many left for the host ? so whonix wont even work in reality.

I agree that it may be worth limiting the number of cores per VM, but I probably wouldn’t go lower than 2. It may be worth doing some testing to see what’s appropriate. My guess is that WS will do better with 4, but that will limit the PCs that can run these VMs.
These are virtual cores, not allocations of the actual CPU architecture to the VMs.
The guidance used to be that you shouldn’t allocate to an individual VM more than the maximum cores on the host. (N.B cores not threads - so most users would likely have an i7 CPU with max of 4 cores, and that should be the maximum allocated: it’s only Coffee Lake that goes beyond 4 cores, I don’t think any other i7s do.)
Despite that guidance I should say that in the past I’ve regularly run series of VMs with no regards to proper core allocation, and haven’t noticed any particular performance hit.

I tested this. Didn’t notice any noticeable performance drawdown. It’s
also compatible two physical cores only. So this can stay as is until
performance testing/similar evidence is provided that it’s a problem.

on my old pc which has 4 cores of CPU only , if u run through the default process (4 cores for the WS and 4 cores for GW) they will start and after like one minute the whole system will freeze.

also vbox will show this message when u open GW or WS settings:-

invalid

my old pc which has 4 cores of CPU only

Did it really have 4 cores or 2?
The VBox guidance relates to actual cores.
It will be appropriate to reflect on what the target user is likely to have. These days, I’d have thought that 4 cores is pretty normal, but to support older PCs it would make sense to drop that to 2 per VM if it’s really an issue. Patrick’s comment suggests it may not be.

@nurmagoz

on my old pc which has 4 cores of CPU only , if u run through the default process (4 cores for the WS and 4 cores for GW) they will start and after like one minute the whole system will freeze.

This is much more likely a low RAM issue. Increase VM RAM.

also vbox will show this message when u open GW or WS settings:-

invalid

Doesn’t matter. VM starts for most users and when they go there, they
can fix it. No big deal.

On an upgrade of VirtualBox Whonix from 13 to 14, it’s necessary to set the include statement in /etc/apparmor.d/system_tor, as I’ve posted elsewhere. Otherwise the Connection Wizard will fail.

I noted that on an upgrade, the system starts following the Tor settings as applied in the previous 13 version, and whonixcheck succeeds. However the Connection Wizard also starts, and this is somewhat confusing. If one cancels that wizard then the gw is functional.
It may be as well to include some helpful comment in the upgrade instructions about this.

Otherwise, as I said above, imo the process is smooth and 14 works well as upgraded system.

NB

The VBox extensions need to be reinstalled in the upgraded system - this isn’t explicitly mentioned in the upgrade guide. Perhaps it should be?

unman:

NB

The VBox extensions need to be reinstalled in the upgraded system - this isn’t explicitly mentioned in the upgrade guide. Perhaps it should be?

That should be automatic by the virtualbox-* packages. Doesn’t that work?

It doesn’t on the upgrade - at least not for me. But I wonder if that’s because of the VirtualBox version I’m running.
I’ll upgrade to 5.2.8 and see if that makes a difference.

unman:

It doesn’t on the upgrade - at least not for me. But I wonder if that’s because of the VirtualBox version I’m running.
I’ll upgrade to 5.2.8 and see if that makes a difference.

We’ll be recommending this one for Debian hosts running Debian stretch:

Currently:

virtualbox (5.1.30-dfsg-1~bpo9+1)

Debian -- Error

Reinstall command… Does

sudo apt-get install --reinstall virtualbox-guest-*

somewhere near the end work?

Reinstall command… Does

sudo apt-get install --reinstall virtualbox-guest-*

somewhere near the end work?

yes it does

unman:

Reinstall command… Does

sudo apt-get install --reinstall virtualbox-guest-*

somewhere near the end work?

yes it does

Added to upgrade instructions just now.

Error - Whonix