Virtual window shuts down

[rossollo]

I have an installation of 4.3.10 latest on an Ubuntu 12.0.4 LTS systems with 8 cores. I have 4 cores assigned to the Virtual box system which is a Guest Windows 7 with latest patches. Since I changed to 4.3.10, an odd thing happens. After awhile one of my virtual windows turns off. I can only get it back by either a full shutdown or a change of the Full screen configuration on and off. Then both displays come back. The video has 256MB, ATI/AMD proprietary driver under Linux. Both monitors are set at the same resolution, although both monitors are NOT of the same type. I have tried assigning 128MB, and 196MB neither has an effect. This did not appear to be a problem under 4.3.8 only started after the 4.3.10 upgrade.

The problem normally occurs when my display goes to sleep, but I try to make sure that only happens when the system is assigned to the Linux workspace. If the display goes to sleep (set for 10 minutes of inactivity) while on the Virtualbox workspace, the window may or may not lock. The only way I know it is asleep is that the Caps lock key will not work. The going away of the virtual display is very randomish, although, it will almost always occur if I leave the system overnight. It occurs whether I leave the screens in full screen or out of full screen mode.

I wanted to down grade back to 4.3.8 to see if the problem still occurred, but the Linux will not let me do the downgrade.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[mpack]

Next time it happens, grab the VM log file for that session (only), zip it, and post the zip here. For details read Minimum information needed for assistance.

[rossollo]

Sorry, here is the file with a dump using the command: VBoxManage showvminfo "Windows 7" --details > dump
Name: Windows 7
Groups: /
Guest OS: Windows 7 (64 bit)
UUID: e4b135eb-708c-45f6-8a9f-7b3c2106847c
Config file: /usr0/home/rosso/VirtualBox VMs/Windows 7/Windows 7.vbox
Snapshot folder: /usr0/home/rosso/VirtualBox VMs/Windows 7/Snapshots
Log folder: /usr0/home/rosso/VirtualBox VMs/Windows 7/Logs
Hardware UUID: e4b135eb-708c-45f6-8a9f-7b3c2106847c
Memory size: 11130MB
Page Fusion: off
VRAM size: 256MB
CPU exec cap: 100%
HPET: off
Chipset: piix3
Firmware: BIOS
Number of CPUs: 4
PAE: on
Long Mode: on
Synthetic CPU: off
CPUID overrides: None
Boot menu mode: message and menu
Boot Device (1): DVD
Boot Device (2): HardDisk
This is after one virtual window shut down.

[mpack]

That is not the VM log file. To grab the log, right click the VM in the manager, select "Show log", save the appropriate log to a file, zip it and attach it here. "Vbox.log" is the most recent log. VBox.log.1 is the next most recent, and so on. I only need one log file, for a completed session in which you had the problem.

[rossollo]

Sorry for being slow. Here is the file latest version. The event just happened while I was out of the room, but the screen was locked.

VBox.log.3.txt

[mpack]

Uh.. if this is the most recent, how come the name is ".3" ? Did you read the explanation of naming which I gave above?

And what happened to my request to zip the file?

And why has the file been edited, removing everything except a few lines around the beginning and end?

[rossollo]

Ok, I now got the latest which happened today and compressed it using zip.

[mpack]

00:00:00.319132 Host RAM: 16006MB total, 12018MB available
...
00:00:00.476955 RamSize <integer> = 0x00000002b7a00000 (11 670 650 880, 10 GB)

You are dedicating a substantial (excessive) portion of available host RAM to the guest. Unless you have an application that needs that amount of RAM I would reduce this to something reasonable, e.g. 4GB.

00:00:00.476946 NumCPUs <integer> = 0x0000000000000004 (4)

Since your CPU only has 4 cores total, I would not expect good things to result when you assign all of them to the guest. The host can't run on air! I suggest reducing to 2, in fact none of my VMs use more than one.

47:51:32.508058 Guest Log: VBoxMP::DxgkDdiEscape: WARNING! :unsupported escape code (0x80)
47:51:32.533450 Guest Log: VBoxMP::DxgkDdiEscape: WARNING! :unsupported escape code (0x80)
47:51:32.535212 Guest Log: VBoxMP::DxgkDdiEscape: WARNING! :unsupported escape code (0x80)
47:51:32.538297 Guest Log: VBoxMP::DxgkDdiEscape: WARNING! :unsupported escape code (0x80)

I see lots of occurrences of the above line in the log. Let's see if you still get these after reducing the number of cores.

47:53:08.403409 UIMediumEnumerator: Machine (or snapshot) event received, ID = e4b135eb-708c-45f6-8a9f-7b3c2106847c
47:53:08.403446 UIMediumEnumerator: Old usage: 5889d52c-b8ae-427f-987c-e0c4b8845c16, 87ba4aa7-08bb-4c8f-ba6a-7ea7277fb299
47:53:08.404092 UIMediumEnumerator: New usage: 5889d52c-b8ae-427f-987c-e0c4b8845c16, 87ba4aa7-08bb-4c8f-ba6a-7ea7277fb299
47:53:08.404112 UIMediumEnumerator: Machine (or snapshot) event processed, ID = e4b135eb-708c-45f6-8a9f-7b3c2106847c

The above is the last thing that appears in the log. There's no sign that this session had terminated. Are you sure the VM wasn't running again when you captured this log, and hence this is not the same session that crashed? If it's the correct session, then the message seems to be snapshot related. Did you attempt to create a snapshot at this point?

[rossollo]

I will change the memory, but I have 8 cores so I assigned only 4 to the VM. I have 16 GB of memory so I will reduce it to 8 GB, but as a last note, this was not happening before the most recent upgrade. I will let you know if this helps.

[rossollo]

Ok, I cut the memory back to 8GB out of 16GB and I have not let the system go into screen save mode. I have been switching between the VM and the Host regularly and one of the virtual screens just died. Here is the captured log.

[mpack]

I have 8 cores so I assigned only 4 to the VM.

00:00:05.572609 Logical host processors: 8 present, 8 max, 8 online, online mask: 00000000000000ff
00:00:05.572695 Physical host cores: 4

And if you don't believe me or VirtualBox, Intel says the same thing, which is that you have 4 cores. The number of threads is not relevant.

So as I said, let's see what happens if you reduce the number of cores assigned to the guest to a maximum of 2.

[rossollo]

Ok I have changed it to 2 CPU's, and now I wait until the 2nd virtual window dies. Here are some screen shots that show what I thought were 8 CPU's. One from VM and one from Linux itself.

[rossollo]

Ok, it died again. I was on the Linux side reading some webnews and the second Virtual window when down from Windows and back to display the Linux background.
I can drag stuff onto the screen, but I can't see it.

Here is the log.

Thank you for looking at this.

[rossollo]

One other piece of info. If I hit the Host-F key and then press it again, it will come back.

[socratis]

A couple of things to try:

• Disable the screen saver, or set it to blank.
• Disable power-saving on the guest.
• Disable 3D acceleration.