HUGE Memory leak @ virtualbox.exe overtime.

[loukingjr]

I am at a loss to understand this solution. How can a browser in a guest use up host RAM beyond what is assigned to a guest?

TIA for any thoughts.

[notleavingwithoutmyRAM]

I am at a loss to understand this solution. How can a browser in a guest use up host RAM beyond what is assigned to a guest?

TIA for any thoughts.

What was causing internet explorer inside my guest to spike up and steal all my hosts RAM, I really dont know, but that is 100% the reason. I tried this well over a couple of dozen times and this is really the case. The performance loss and RAM numbers were insane after having a guest use IE automatically for longer than 30 minutes without a restart. To the point where simply restarting the virtual guest was barely possible.

If you guys want I can dig into the details, but im not even sure if its worth it since (so far) it seems like its a unique problem. But if anyone, stranger lurking around or member on the forum ever find this thread you know what might fix it; because God knows I tried everything else.

[mpack]

What was causing internet explorer inside my guest to spike up and steal all my hosts RAM, I really dont know, but that is 100% the reason.

You have not identified a reason, only an unexplained symptom.

Internet Explorer - like any other guest application - has no ability to allocate RAM on the host. That is completely impossible. If the effect you describe is real then it must have an indirect cause: IE is doing something which causes a host process to allocate memory. It would have to be I/O of some kind, either graphics, network or disk I/O. The obvious choice is still a disk cache, reflecting the writes of temporary internet files inside the guest.

The next time you come back and say that something is 100% certain, I hope you will by then have tried the simple test that I have suggested multiple times - wait until host memory is apparantly exhausted and then see if the host OS fails to run a host app. Review the thread if you want to know what this would prove.

[notleavingwithoutmyRAM]

So you still think the RAM issue is in my own delusional mind? Ive posted several times, the performance drops substantially the longer I leave it on.


If left on for almost up to an hour, i wont be able to even close open or minimize any app. <--- your "test".

I dont know what is causing the RAM theft, but I know its through Internet explorer on my windows XP guest, and that problem itself will only show on the Host itself.
Its not a fix, its a workaround I know that. Chrome, Firefox, Opera works perfectly... If I turn on IE and have it working in my guest, the said guest machine virtualbox.exe process will sky rocket in RAM usage.

Like i said though, Im only posting here for any possible fellas that might have this issue. I could have turned my back and ignored it completely, but ontop of that if you guys need me to try other things out (besides what ive already been told to and tried) im up for it.

[loukingjr]

which version of I.E. were you running?

[notleavingwithoutmyRAM]

which version of I.E. were you running?

Internet Explorer 8

Version 8.0.6001.18702

I know, its IE, and ontop of that its not even updated and all, but believe me I ran it for years doing one simple task and outta the blue (well not really, technically..) the issues showed up. It ran flawlessy til I made this thread.

Ive simply switched over to FF now though.

[loukingjr]

The reason I asked was because I do have an XP guest with IE 8 and was wondering why I never saw the RAM issue. I'm going to run it for a few days and see.

[notleavingwithoutmyRAM]

The reason I asked was because I do have an XP guest with IE 8 and was wondering why I never saw the RAM issue. I'm going to run it for a few days and see.

I dont think that is needed sir, since the issue showed up outta the blue (somewhat). I ran the same VB version, same IE version, same OS version, month after month for several years, somewhere along the road something must have changed. Its an odd and most likely unique little issue from my several week long research, and it somewhat pisses me off that I couldnt find the actual root for it.


EDIT: Also, days would be alot longer than what is needed to halt this system, after only a mere 30-60 minutes with the guest working with IE its impossible to navigate around the host or guest.

[loukingjr]

just my own curiosity.

[AnrDaemon]

So you still think the RAM issue is in my own delusional mind? Ive posted several times, the performance drops substantially the longer I leave it on.

Noone said that you didn't see what you are seeing. What people are trying to say, is that you did not give them steps to understand or reproduce the issue. Which may lead to a fix.
Try disabling host IO cache for that VM. If this is disk IO cache giving you issues, this may help. Or not.

[loukingjr]

Still remains a mystery for me. I ran my XP guest SP3 with IE8 (same version), host cache enabled, vd on IDE. When I first opened the guest it took up 1.18GBs on my host. (RAM set to 1024MBs). After running it for awhile (approx. 3 hrs), including watching videos in IE, surfing etc., the RAM usage hadn't budged on my host from 1.18 GBs. I'm going to reduce the RAM to 512MB at some point and see if I can force more disk activity.

[Mustela]

Hello!

Looking for this problem on Internet, I cannot find any clear response for the same problem. I'm running NEWER Virtualbox 5.0.14 on Gentoo host and, guesting Windows 2003, the problem is the same: no needed waiting hours, it can be detected on seconds, upgrading the guest system for example. I will check IE8 but, like other users says, shouldn't be like that.

I think the problem is on the host kernel modules: the disk cache is on the active/used memory and not on the inactive/cached/buffered memory. This is a bad think, because at this time, when the active memory is at 99%, drop my host cache memory.

Guest RAM have 512MB and now, on the host, I'm using 3,35GB w/400MB buffer/cache (4GB total). Dropping directory entries/inode cache on the host, the used memory is reduced to 1,6GB and with the guest running! 2GB I/O cached on active RAM!! And if not more is probably due the host limitation.

It will be improved, for example, specifyng the amount of memory used for caching the drive, if it can't stay on the buffered/cache area.

[mpack]

I see no need to repeat the entire thread. The answers to all of your questions is already there.