VirtualBox NAT is unreliable
Mac OS X + VirtualBox + NAT = Problems
I was running Mac OS X Mavericks + VirtualBox 4.3.18r96516 setting up a build system for Android when all of a sudden… random unexplinable corruption with a normal Android repo sync
Write failed: Broken pipe
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly
fatal: early EOF
fatal: index-pack failed
Most unexpected?
Connection to 10.x.x.x closed by remote host.
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly
fatal: early EOF
fatal: index-pack failed
Corrupt?
Received disconnect from 10.x.x.x: 2: Packet corrupt
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly
fatal: early EOF
fatal: index-pack failed
This was while testing a local repo mirror I was setting up. First instinct was to blame the old computer acting as the server, but hosting a git repo on old hardware shouldn’t corrupt data, instead it should just be slow. Naturally, I ported the repo mirror mess over to a faster machine, same problem.
Real Problem?
Virtual Box NAT. That’s it. All I did was add a network bridge or public network in Vagrant speak and the problem was resolved. Sigh. Add default NAT and Shared Folders to the list of VirtualBox features that you should never touch unless you want poor performance and sometimes outright failure or corruption.
In Other News
Checkout my Docker image for easily building Android or Cyanogenmod images on any Linux system without clobbering your host:
And for those of your forced to live in an Mac OS X world without a readily accessible Linux dev machine, checkout my Vagrant wrapper (which is way better then boot2docker):
Hopefully some day I can write them up!
Comments