Linux guest goes to guru meditation

Discussions about using Linux guests in VirtualBox.
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bgee22
Posts: 35
Joined: 25. May 2009, 17:20
Primary OS: Linux other
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Windows XP, Centos, Fedora 10, FreeDOS

Linux guest goes to guru meditation

Post by bgee22 »

Hello everyone -

I have been wrestling with a problem where one of my Linux guests goes to "guru meditation" every few hours. It will not stay up for more than about 3 hours at a time. The attached file contains both VBox.log and the xml file that defines the guest.

Host: Dell PowerEdge 1900 with dual Xeon processors and 16 gig of RAM. CentOS 7.1.1503. VirtualBox 5.0.6. There are three other Linux guests running on this computer and they are working just fine.

Guest: CentOS 6.7 64-bit. No GUI, it is char-mode only. The guest is used to run a test version of our internal Web site, so Apache is the only thing it runs. The only user is our developer.

I tried the following:

1) Reduce memory from 2048mb to 1536mb.
2) Change from 2 CPUs to 1 CPU.
3) Remove guest additions.
4) Set CanUseLargerHeap to 1
5) Set cbHyperHeap to 3145728. Interestingly, this change seems to have reduced the runtime between crashes!
6) Removed hddtemp and smartd services from the guest. They really don't work with virtual drives.

Here are the extra settings from the guest. One of HyperHeaps is bogus due to a typo.

$ VBoxManage getextradata testintranet enumerate
Key: GUI/GuruMeditationHandler, Value: PowerOff
Key: GUI/LastNormalWindowPosition, Value: 1321,293,720,437
Key: GUI/RestrictedRuntimeDevicesMenuActions, Value: HardDrives
Key: GUI/RestrictedRuntimeMachineMenuActions, Value: SaveState,PowerOff
Key: GUI/StatusBar/IndicatorOrder, Value: HardDisks,OpticalDisks,FloppyDisks,Network,USB,SharedFolders,Display,VideoCapture,Features,Mouse,Keyboard
Key: VBoxInternal/MM/CanUseLargerHeap, Value: 1
Key: VBoxInternal/MM/cbHyperHeap, Value: 3145728
Key: VBoxInternal/MM/ccHyperHeap, Value: 3145728

Looking through the log file, you can see the problem start after 2 hours and change of run time. So far the only thing I can do is poweroff the guest and then launch it again. It will run for a few hours and fail.

What else can I look at?

Thanks - Bill Gee
Perryg
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Joined: 6. Sep 2008, 22:55
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VBox Version: OSE self-compiled
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Re: Linux guest goes to guru meditation

Post by Perryg »

First thing I would suggest is that you upgrade to 5.0.8 and see if that helps.
bgee22
Posts: 35
Joined: 25. May 2009, 17:20
Primary OS: Linux other
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Windows XP, Centos, Fedora 10, FreeDOS

SOLVED: Linux guest goes to guru meditation

Post by bgee22 »

Upgrading to 5.0.8 did not help. No change.

Removing the optical drive from the VM configuration is what finally fixed it. I don't know why that did the trick, but it did. I don't need an optical drive on the VM, so removing it causes no pain.

Bill Gee
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