Ubuntu 14.04 Server slow load

[ag7878]

I'm using Ubuntu 16.04.3 as a host and have several linux servers as gusts. Recently, after I upgraded VB to 5.1.28, the guest running Ubuntu server 14.04 loads very slowly. Other guests run ok.

[socratis]

• Follow a "start the VM from cold-boot" / "observe error" / "shutdown the VM" cycle.
• With the VM shut down completely (not paused or saved), right-click on the VM in the VirtualBox Manager and select "Show Log".
• Save only the first "VBox.log", ZIP it and attach it to your response (see the "Upload attachment" tab below the reply form).

Remember that simple rule:

• Total CPUs for your guests ≤ Host CPUs + 1.
• Total RAM+vRAM+overhead for your guests ≤ Host available RAM + some.

[ag7878]

Thanks. Attached is the log file.

[socratis]

00:00:00.572693 Host RAM: 7507MB (7.3GB) total, 4397MB (4.2GB) available
00:00:00.750205 RamSize <integer> = 0x0000000040000000 (1 073 741 824, 1 024 MB)

You can certainly afford 2048 MB of RAM for your guest. 1024 MB is the conservative default, but you can afford double that on your system. That will definitely give your guest more room to breathe...

00:00:00.750391 ICH9 <integer> = 0x0000000000000001 (1)

Any particular reason you're using an experimental feature for which you're warned not to enable?

00:04:11.807010 ERROR [COM]: aRC=NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005) aIID={872da645-4a9b-1727-bee2-5585105b9eed}
                aComponent={ConsoleWrap} aText={Could not mount the media/drive
                '/usr/share/virtualbox/VBoxGuestAdditions.iso' (VERR_PDM_MEDIA_LOCKED)},
                preserve=false aResultDetail=0

Please eject the VBoxGuestAdditions.iso from this and any other VM that might have it mounted. Take a look at the menu: File » Virtual Media Manager... » Optical disks, and see which VM has the GAs loaded and release them from that VM. It a really good idea to follow the pattern Insert GAs CD » Install GAs » Eject GAs CD, otherwise you're going to run into trouble, like above.

[ag7878]

I released the guest edition CD. I changed the chipset to PIIX3. I increased the RAM. Still it takes this guest to load almost 5 times slower than other guests. For example, I compared the settings of a guest running server 16.04 and both VMs settings are identicle. the 16.04 server loads much faster. I've attached the current (new) log.

[Perryg]

Long boot times usually means the OS is waiting for something that is supposed to happen to actually happen.

Code: Select all

00:00:14.903756 GUI: UIFrameBufferPrivate::performResize: Size=800x600, Directly using source bitmap content
00:01:06.767677 VMMDev: Guest Log: VBoxService 5.1.30 r118389 (verbosity: 0) linux.amd64 (Oct 16 2017 11:53:28) release log

00:01:06.774634 VMMDev: Guest Log: 00:00:00.007120 automount vbsvcAutoMountWorker: Shared folder 'www' was mounted to '/media/sf_www'
00:01:43.273961 GUI: Request to close active machine-window.

While this log does not show a lot ( see above ) the previous one does. It showed a long wait time for the guest additions to load because it was waiting for something. Later in that log it shows a shared folder that took forever to load. The share was an auto load ( which I totally despise ) and these sometimes take a while if the guest OS can not find what it wants in a timely manor.

Conclusion: If I were troubleshooting this I would disable the shared folder and see if boot time improves, and if it does then I would find out why.

Note: typically by the time the log shows the VBoxService info the guest has booted. My servers achieve this in about 14 seconds and the VBoxService starts around 60s, so this log seems close to normal to me.