VirtualBox 5.0.0-101573~Debian~jessie

[dudekm]

Per your request I have removed my posts and will not reply to you again. However I finally figured out what you were seeing and have found the issue. Ram if you like you can PM me for my findings.

Just for the record, this has been taken to the vboxdev mailing list with the subject "Excessive load averages with nothing running". We'll continue tracking this issue there as I'm more likely to get direct feedback there. If it turns out to not be fixed within a patch or two, we should open a proper bug ticket for it.

Completely different computer:
AMD 2.4GHz, 4 cores - 16GB RAM
Of course: Debian GNU/Linux 8.1 and VirtualBox 5.0.0-101573~Debian~jessie

[Ramshankar]

Thank you, what I wanted to confirm was this, notice the state of that thread is "D" (indicating TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE state):

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1 D root      2153     2  0  80   0 -     0 -      14:41 ?        00:00:00 [iprt-VBoxTscThr]

I've committed a fix to trunk and the fix will be available in the next maintenance release of VirtualBox 5.0.

Just for your information, it is not *real* load, Linux accounts uninterruptible sleeps (which the VBoxTscThr thread is doing) as 'load' and is therefore reporting it as such. In reality, it is not really keeping the CPU (or I/O) busy in any way, it's just doing a sleep which Linux thinks otherwise.

[dudekm]

Thank you, what I wanted to confirm was this, notice the state of that thread is "D" (indicating TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE state):

Code: Select all

1 D root      2153     2  0  80   0 -     0 -      14:41 ?        00:00:00 [iprt-VBoxTscThr]

I've committed a fix to trunk and the fix will be available in the next maintenance release of VirtualBox 5.0.

Just for your information, it is not *real* load, Linux accounts uninterruptible sleeps (which the VBoxTscThr thread is doing) as 'load' and is therefore reporting it as such. In reality, it is not really keeping the CPU (or I/O) busy in any way, it's just doing a sleep which Linux thinks otherwise.

Thank You for the information.
So I noticed, that all CPU power available.
It also monitors a Raid and I have not seen the load (I/O)
But the graph for /proc/loadavg was alarming (1 entry)

[Bruksee]

Thank you, what I wanted to confirm was this, notice the state of that thread is "D" (indicating TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE state):

Code: Select all

1 D root      2153     2  0  80   0 -     0 -      14:41 ?        00:00:00 [iprt-VBoxTscThr]

I've committed a fix to trunk and the fix will be available in the next maintenance release of VirtualBox 5.0.

Just for your information, it is not *real* load, Linux accounts uninterruptible sleeps (which the VBoxTscThr thread is doing) as 'load' and is therefore reporting it as such. In reality, it is not really keeping the CPU (or I/O) busy in any way, it's just doing a sleep which Linux thinks otherwise.

Hm I hate to resurrect an old thread but I'm seeing a similar problem on this host:

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vbox@tabletbase:~$ uname -a
Linux tabletbase 4.3.0-1-686-pae #1 SMP Debian 4.3.3-2 (2015-12-17) i686 GNU/Linux

With no guests running, the system load is 0.X, basically normal. I start up one guest that is idle and the host load goes to 1.x. I start up a second idle guest and the host load goes to 2.x. I stop the guests, load goes back to 0.x. With two guests running the host isn't doing anything of note:

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top - 21:16:01 up 50 min,  2 users,  load average: 2.55, 2.56, 2.19
Tasks: 105 total,   1 running, 104 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
%Cpu0  :  0.0 us,  0.0 sy,  0.0 ni,100.0 id,  0.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
%Cpu1  :  0.0 us, 11.8 sy,  0.0 ni, 88.2 id,  0.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
%Cpu2  :  0.0 us,  0.0 sy,  0.0 ni,100.0 id,  0.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
%Cpu3  :  0.0 us,  0.0 sy,  0.0 ni,100.0 id,  0.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
KiB Mem :  1952528 total,  1449808 free,   282768 used,   219952 buff/cache
KiB Swap:  1979388 total,  1979388 free,        0 used.  1629936 avail Mem 

  PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND    
 2038 vbox      20   0  192476  38928  26696 S  12.9  2.0   0:28.41 VBoxHeadle+
 1977 vbox      20   0  303504  45984  28772 S   1.0  2.4   0:27.08 VBoxHeadle+
    1 root      20   0    6312   4772   3784 S   0.0  0.2   0:03.77 systemd    

This is Virtualbox 5.0.10 and 5.0.12 on latest Debian. I have an identical workload on an Ubuntu box with a 64bit kernel and a 5.0.10 Virtualbox and I don't see the load issue there. Would that last fix around 5.0.2 apply to a 32 bit kernel too?