Experiments Blog · Openhood

If you’ve experienced really slow downloads from within VirtualBox on Mac, chances are you’re using the default NIC for your NAT interface.

I’ve seen docker‘s pull taking ages when a layer size is more than a couple MB and chef installer taking more than 10mn to download the package…

Here’s how to fix it in docker-machine and test-kitchen.

For docker-machine

Check what’s your docker-machine VM’s name:

docker-machine ls
(out)NAME           ACTIVE   DRIVER       STATE     URL                         SWARM   DOCKER    ERRORS
(out)default        -        virtualbox   Running   tcp://192.168.99.100:2376           v1.12.5

it can give you different depending of your config.

If it’s Running, then stop it first:

docker-machine stop default

then change the NIC to use the PCnet-FAST III (Am79C973) instead of the default Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop (82540EM):

VBoxManage modifyvm "default" --nictype1 "Am79C973"

And finally start it, it will now use the new NIC with “hopefully” improved speed:

docker-machine start default

For test-kitchen

Update your kitchen.yml or kitchen.local.yml to have your vagrant driver include the customize config below:

driver:
  name: vagrant
  customize:
    nictype1: "Am79C973"

Enjoy using all your available bandwidth!!