Running OrBit in a Win10 VM under Fedora Linux...in case anyone cares

[Ubermick]

Hi all, new to the forum and to OrBit. Should have my PINs very soon I hope so I can get some of that sweet Pixel active matrix headlight action on my Polestar 2! I have the cable, but I only have one laptop now, and all my machines run some form of Linux or FreeBSD. My only Windows machines are a gaming rig in my home office on the other side of the house from my garage, and one that my grandson uses in the upstairs guest room - maybe someday I'll repurpose that one to be a shop PC.

But I thought I'd try something crazy and fired up my Windows 10 virtual machine on my laptop and sure enough, OrBit was able to control the USB-attached ethernet connection via a virtual network NAT connection (default on QEMU/KVM) and it worked like a charm. Was able to pull codes, get the LV battery voltage, the SoH on the HV battery (93% after 3+ years and 30K+ miles!). Great news for me, no need to build a 150ft network cable.

So if anyone needs to try this, just thought I'd throw it out there.

[x119]

Advice would be not to use any form of virtualisation when using Orbit (or any other program that connects / flashes). It’s simply too risky with a virtual adapter.

[Ubermick]

Advice would be not to use any form of virtualisation when using Orbit (or any other program that connects / flashes). It’s simply too risky with a virtual adapter.

I ended up building a long network cable to run to my office after all. The software worked fine reading codes and such, but would time out when resetting to programming mode. So I ended up hooking it to my one Windows machine in my office and it worked perfectly - programmed just fine and now I have the full beauty of the Active Matrix lights on my Polestar 2. I'm very happy now. So it was an interesting experiment and I do know I can read and clear codes, just not program. However to be safe, probably best to follow x119's advice. :-)

[Power6]

I am OK with virtual machines, given folks using those, they are pretty technical. The network connection needed, is all handled by Windows...as long as you can present the network adapter connected to the car, to the Windows VM, then all should work well. Also, you need to be running on x86 hardware.

The issues that have been seen, is trying to run on ARM CPU, under parallels on Mac, which currently OrBit won't let you instal anyways. Even on the old Intel Macs, you have Parallels with it's own idea of virtualized networking, not standard virtual machine stuff (virtual box, VMWare, Hyper-V, etc.) which can be a problem.

[Ubermick]

Yep, I may play with it a bit more - use a macvlan or a bridge rather than the default virtual connection that NATs. If I figure something out I'll post. :-)

[x119]

I guess what I was trying to get across above, and what Power6 put better, is that this is general advice. I.e don’t expect any support.
 If you’re technically competent then you’ll likely get it to work (I always ran Vida 2014d in VM).

[IMAY2023]

I have been using virtual servers, workstation since the first virtualization is released. (Hyper-V and Wmare).  The risk is not the network adaptor, it's possible to dedicate the physical adaptor to the guest (virtual) the main risk is the host itself. A regular MAC / linux / windows workstation / laptop is not build for full virtualization. The priority for resources is always for the host and not the guest. It can suspend the guest machine (virtual windows 10) anytime randomly or even crash the virtualization app itself.  

So, I wouldn't risk it flashing a car via virtual host that runs on a regular workstation. If it hangs in the middle of the flashing your car may turn into brick which would cost you a lot more than $100 a spare laptop sitting in your tool box just for fleshing!