vboxsvc mem leak 2.02 puel vista host?

[bcowan]

Hello,
I'm seeing a major memory leak with 2.02 PUEL on a vista sp1 32-bit p4 w/HT host. I searched the bugs and didn't see anything. I don't really know what info is needed to debug either. Basically after idling for 24 hours the mem usage of vboxsvc is at 1.6 gigs on a 2 gig system... everything is completely paged and the physical memory usage is still slowly rising....system is completely unresponsive. I don't have any crazy options that I know of enabled, just acpi:windows sound:usb:sata. The guest is ubuntu 8.10 alpha 5 if that makes a differrence. Any advice or info is appreciated.
Thanks

[drgunther]

I'm seeing the same kind of problem.
I'm running this on Vista 32 bit Home Premium with 4 GB RAM installed (3,5 GB available) and a Intel CPU.

I had a virtual instance of Windows Server 2008 which was installed under VBX 1.6.0 which I wanted to work on this weekend. While I was at it I took the time to upgrade VBX to 2.0.2 and continued installing applications in my virtual W2k8 machine.

During the course of this weekend I've been doing some development work in the virtual machine (mainly Visual Studio 2008 et al) and noticed that after a couple of hours (4 or 5) the virtual machine gets very slow, not at all as snappy as when it's freshly booted. The virtual machines CPU load was nothing worth mentioning, however the host machines CPU load was _high_ (~80-90% continously) and all the CPU was going to VboxSVC.exe. Another thing I also noticed was that it had hogged _a lot_ of memory.

What I've done to resolve this condition is to simply save the execution state of the virtual machine and then restart the VBX application on the host machine and then just resume the virtual machine. Host CPU load goes to 1-2% and a bunch of memory is released. Snappyness is back.

Adjusting the amount of memory assigned to the virtual machine doesn't change anything (512 MB of 4 GB should be doable).

So, for some reason VBoxSvc.exe is eating a lot of memory (although it seems to return it when exiting, which in a way is good). The high host CPU-load could be because of swapping given that I'm running all this on SATA drives (i.e. no dedicated CPU for disk access). Haven't investigated this further though.

Tried to downgrade back to 1.6.0 to see if the problem existed in that version as well, but the downgrade resulted in me not being able to start VBX at all. So I'm back at 2.0.2 again, it's not like I can't run my virtual machines at all. ;)

So, it'll be interesting to see if there are any more people around with this type of problem.
Thanks!

[Entegy]

I have the same problem. VBoxSVC.exe begins to eat RAM and CPU after a shortwhile. Running Vista Ultimate 32-bit.

[bcowan]

drgunther, exactly the same....after about 6 hours it becomes unuesable. Logout the VM and restart VBox and memory and cpu load are cleared to normal. After 24 hours my host was almost hard locked, had to wait forever for task manager to come up and kill vboxsvc.

[Nez]

I'm having the same problem.
Vista home premium
ibm-T61
2GB ram

guest os.
Debian Lenny
256MB ram
32MB video ram

I was doing some coding for one of my classes and all I had open was a terminal and gedit. left the comp for 3+hours, and VBoxSVC.exe was already eating up 1.3+GB or my ram and 50-60% processor.

previously on VBox 1.6... I could leave a machine running for days without worry.

[sandervl]

This time we can thank MS:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949700

And I can confirm it works here (Vista 64 bits SP1). The memory leak is gone after applying the hotfix.

This applies to Vista only (32, 64 bits or Win2k8 server).

[ischi]

Works with Vista 32Bit Business, too.

[drgunther]

That sounds highly interesting.

I have on purpose let the VBX interface sit idle during the day today without running any machines and it turns out that it will eat memory then as well, however slightly slower.

Gonna apply the hotfix and report back.

[Nez]

Thanks sandervl.

confirmed working: Home Premium 32-bit

[jbaudhuin]

Do I have to wade through tech support to get the hotfix?
Is this a 2.0.2 thing only, or is it just now that I noticed it? (I installed 2.0.2 today.)

[plong]

I describe in a recent post how memory and CPU load increase over time.

I just requested the hotfix from Microsoft. Now I'm waiting for their email to make it to my inbox.

[plong]

This is the message I get after entering my password:

Microsoft Self-Extractor
An error occurred while unzipping. One or more files were not successfully unzipped. The error code is 40.

Anybody else have problems installing the hotfix?

[Entegy]

I would try if I could find the hotfix.

[Nez]

I would try if I could find the hotfix.

Look for the link "View and request hotfix downloads". It is near the upper left of the page linked by sandevrl.
fill out the form with email, etc. Yo will then get a link to the download in your inbox.

[plong]

I downloaded the hotfix via the link in the email that Microsoft sent me. I ran the installer and, when prompted for the password contained in the email, I duly entered it. I then got the "error code is 40" error when the installer was trying to unzip the hotfix. I can't find anything online that describes what this error means or what to do about it. (The Microsoft tech-support site says to contact lenovo because Vista was pre-installed, but they aren't going to know anything about this, I just know it. It will be a waste of a few hours wading through their support system.)

However, when the installer prompts for the password, there is a "Skip" button, as if the password is optional. I clicked it, and then got this message:

"All files were successfully unzipped."

So, was the hotfix installed? How can I tell? I can't find any mention of it in Vista's "Programs and Features" tool. It seems that the CPU load is now much lower when running VirtualBox 2.0.2, but after using it a while, the load does go up noticeably.