Opened 15 years ago
Closed 14 years ago
#5675 closed defect (fixed)
Paused VM causes swap storm after 5-10 minutes
Reported by: | David Harris | Owned by: | |
---|---|---|---|
Component: | other | Version: | VirtualBox 3.1.0 |
Keywords: | paused | Cc: | |
Guest type: | Windows | Host type: | Windows |
Description
This might be a little difficult to describe - if I'm not clear I apologise in advance and I'd be more than willing to follow-up with more information as requested.
Host: Linux 2.6.30, 2.6.31, 2.6.32 CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5200+ Memory: 2GB RAM, 8GB swap Guest: Windows XP, fully up-to-date, Guest Additions installed
When I pause (Host+p) the VM, after about 5-10 minutes, the host starts swapping things out slowly but surely. After about 5 minutes, the machine is unusable and requires a hard reset. This happens consistently every time. Leaving the VM running doesn't cause this problem. Suspending the VM (closing it and saving state) doesn't have this problem. There's nothing unexpected in the logs.
Bluntly I expect it should be pretty easy to reproduce on similar hardware (it happened with VirtualBox 3.0.12 as well), but if any more information is required, please let me know.
Thanks,
Dave
Change History (5)
comment:1 by , 15 years ago
comment:5 by , 14 years ago
Resolution: | → fixed |
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Status: | new → closed |
Please reopen if still relevant with VBox 4.0.4.
And by "things", I mean everything on the host. The guest is configured to use 384MB of memory, and here's the output of 'free' after the VM has just booted:
And just after the VM has paused:
And, shortly after the swapping starts:
Also, here's what the last of ~/.VirtualBox/Machines/winxppro/Logs/VBox.log has; note that no additional lines are appended after the VM is paused.
Close examination of iostat and iotop (iostat excerpt included below) indicates that the swap-outs start happening within a minute or two of the VM being paused, and continues until I unpause the VM. Trying to use swapped-out applications while the VM is paused works, but the swapping-out is pretty aggressive so doesn't work for long.
vmstat excerpt for when idle (but VM is running):
vmstat excerpt for about 15 minutes after the VM is paused, when swap-out is happening, but machine is still responsive:
vmstat excerpt for when machine is becoming quite unresponsive, about 25 minutes after VM was paused:
Thanks again,
Dave
P.S.: Very consistent, I've tested this a dozen times (across different kernel versions, builds, and VirtualBox builds and versions).