Far Beyond Code LLC

Bruce Kirkpatrick

Click here to see how google sees this page | Change Font Size: Smaller | Normal | Larger

Offering the best for less

Generate more leads and manage your online business with the best technology platform in the real estate industry. This online marketing solution for agents, teams and offices helps you increase your sales to new levels.

Look your best with our design services

Your web site is probably the first thing customers see before choosing to do business with you. Our designers understand how to communicate the image you want to represent.

"Search engine optimization" only means something when it actually works.

We don't sell you wonderful stories about your amazing online future. We know that most of our competitors just can't deliver. We'll make it easier for you through honesty, affordability and transparency.

Let us modernize the way you do business

Integrating disparate systems, enterprise search, custom intranets, ecommerce systems, automation, advanced reporting and analysis, online collaboration. You name it, we have done it.

Experience + Passion = MAXIMUM RESULTS

Since 2001, this labor of love has provided endless challenges. While many people struggle, Bruce eagerly solves complex computer problems. You need a passionate expert like Bruce on your team.

Virtualbox shared folders much faster then samba for Railo + Nginx

Follow me:

Thu, Jul 11, 2013 at 2:40AM

It seems virtualbox configuration needs to be just right for good performance when the web application's source code is stored outside the virtual machine. I figured out that virtio nic type (Virtualbox network adapter paravirtualized network) and shared folders are much faster then choosing another nic type and using samba. In the past, I had issues with Virtualbox shared folders not updating cached info on source code files quickly enough. Maybe they have improved it or maybe I just read the manual better now.

I found there is a "ttl" (time to live) mount option. I set mine to ttl=1, so it will hopefully only cache file info for 1 second. I think virtualbox must be hanging/pausing when there is a lot of samba I/O, but it runs close to native speed with shared folders for operations that used to take 5 to 10 times longer to execute. The system also boots up much faster.

After setting up a shared folder in virtualbox and clicking "make permanent", you can add it in /etc/fstab in linux to auto-mount it at boot. Here is the command I used to mount a shared folder named "vhosts" to /opt/vhosts on the guest.

vhosts /opt/vhosts vboxsf uid=nginx,gid=nginx,ttl=1,dmode=0770,fmode=0660 0 0

The manual says ttl = "time to live for dentry", which meant nothing to me. Then I looked up the definition of dentry, and saw it is essentially the filesystem metadata cache stuff that you are setting to expire faster or slower. This should prevent any issues I was having with updating source code and not seeing it change right away.

FYI: The samba mount was configured like this, and while it works the same way, it is much slower:

//hostsystem/vhosts /opt/vhosts cifs uid=nginx,gid=nginx,file_mode=0660,dir_mode=0770,rw,noserverino,nounix 0 0

The host system is windows 8 pro and the virtualbox guest is ubuntu 13.04. I also had this problem with Centos 6 as well and I assume it would also be faster when configured like this.