High CPU load with idle guest

Discussions related to using VirtualBox on Mac OS X hosts.
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Alex_b
Posts: 2
Joined: 7. Feb 2023, 11:26

High CPU load with idle guest

Post by Alex_b »

I've found VBox takes 300+% CPU without any works at guest OS. I saw forum reports about audio and high CPU. Guest don't have audio device. I also enabled 3d acceleration, and looks it helps a bit. After that I saw peak only 100%+. I don't know how it relates because guest Centos 7 don't have a GUI. Attaching logs from cold boot, ps host, vmstat guest. At first load was 10% and a bit later goes up to 50-70% and down.
I also captured traces a day early with high load, traces.zip.

Host MacOS Ventura 13.1 i7-9750H (6 cores) 16GB Mem
VirtualBox VM 7.0.4 r154605 darwin.amd64
Guest 4 CPU 2048 Mem Centos 7
guest
$vmstat 1
procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ------cpu-----
r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa st
1 0 0 1529428 2108 166960 0 0 68 3 52 86 0 0 99 0 0
2 0 0 1529428 2108 166960 0 0 0 0 43 30 0 0 100 0 0
0 0 0 1529436 2108 166992 0 0 0 4 49 56 0 0 100 0 0
4 0 0 1529436 2108 166992 0 0 0 54 21 33 0 0 100 0 0
host
501 11152 622 400c 0 46 0 37212696 2970696 - S 0 ?? 0:52.90 /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/Resources/VirtualB
ps -l -M 11152
UID PID PPID F CPU PRI NI SZ RSS WCHAN S ADDR TTY TIME CMD USER TT %CPU STIME UTIME
501 11152 622 400c 0 4T 0 37183240 2936876 - S 0 ?? 2:41.18 /Ap alex ?? 0.0 0:15.60 0:14.18
501 11152 622 400c 0 4T 0 37183240 2936876 - S 0 ?? 2:41.18 0.0 0:00.61 0:00.30
501 11152 622 400c 0 4T 0 37183240 2936876 - S 0 ?? 2:41.18 0.0 0:00.07 0:01.07
501 11152 622 400c 0 4T 0 37183240 2936876 - S 0 ?? 2:41.18 0.0 0:00.00 0:00.00
501 11152 622 400c 0 4T 0 37183240 2936876 - S 0 ?? 2:41.18 0.0 0:00.01 0:00.01
501 11152 622 400c 0 4T 0 37183240 2936876 - S 0 ?? 2:41.18 0.0 0:00.15 0:00.09
501 11152 622 400c 0 4T 0 37183240 2936876 - S 0 ?? 2:41.18 0.0 0:00.15 0:00.09
501 11152 622 400c 0 4T 0 37183240 2936876 - S 0 ?? 2:41.18 0.0 0:00.01 0:00.01
501 11152 622 400c 0 4T 0 37183240 2936876 - S 0 ?? 2:41.18 0.0 0:00.01 0:00.00
501 11152 622 400c 0 4T 0 37183240 2936876 - S 0 ?? 2:41.18 23.7 0:12.84 0:28.46
501 11152 622 400c 0 4T 0 37183240 2936876 - S 0 ?? 2:41.18 0.0 0:06.87 0:25.08
501 11152 622 400c 0 4T 0 37183240 2936876 - S 0 ?? 2:41.18 24.0 0:04.16 0:24.32
Attachments
traces.zip
(77.83 KiB) Not downloaded yet
Archive.zip
(50.34 KiB) Downloaded 2 times
scottgus1
Site Moderator
Posts: 20965
Joined: 30. Dec 2009, 20:14
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Windows, Linux

Re: High CPU load with idle guest

Post by scottgus1 »

Please see viewtopic.php?f=8&t=107801&p=531653#p531653

Due to Ventura's forcing of no-kext Apple Hypervisor mode (the equivalent of Windows Hyper-V, including the green turtle and all that the animal implies) Virtualbox will run slower. You might be able to get relatively decent performance by reducing the VM's processors to 1 and turning off the VM's I/O APIC setting.
Alex_b
Posts: 2
Joined: 7. Feb 2023, 11:26

Re: High CPU load with idle guest

Post by Alex_b »

1 cpu is not my way, I usually compile sources sometimes kernel and load VMs with high load testing which requires SMP. With single CPU low chance to get race and so. Probably MacOS downgrade is a solution.
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