VirtualBox aborted frequently recently

[katew]

Hi,

I've been using virtualbox for nearly one year. But recently it keeps aborting several times in one day, especially after the update this month. My host is Mac OS X(4-core, 8G ram), the guest is gentoo(2-core, 5G ram). The log is attached. Thank you for your time.

[mpack]

This may not be all of it, but you are giving the VM resources you don't have.

00:00:02.010601 Host RAM: 8192MB (8.0GB) total, 4537MB (4.4GB) available
...
00:00:02.270523 RamSize <integer> = 0x0000000160000000 (5 905 580 032, 5 632 MB, 5.5 GB)
00:00:02.270877 VRamSize <integer> = 0x0000000010000000 (268 435 456, 256 MB)

You need to free up host RAM, or add more, or reduce the VM's RAM allocation to around 3GB.

You are also giving the VM both of the host's cores. That can lead to instability, but there's no good solution for that. Basically this host is not designed to run two modern 64-bit OS at the same time.

You are also using a rather large HD+ display size (2K), without enabling 3D acceleration. This unaccelerated graphics engine isn't up to this and it can again lead to instability or just poor performance.

I can't say much else because the log is incomplete. Don't grab logs while the VM is still running.

[katew]

Thank you very much for your prompt reply. But I didn't encounter this problem and everything was quite smooth a month ago. It happened recently even when I didn't run any other application except virtualbox on MacOS and the virtual box only had a terminal and a browser running for viewing some text. Sometimes it aborted without me by the computer for a few minutes.

I've updated the full logs again. Sorry for the prior inconvenience. Would you please have another look? thanks!

[scottgus1]

The logs show no changes pertinent to Mpack's suggesstions:

You need to free up host RAM, or add more, or reduce the VM's RAM allocation to around 3GB.
....
You are also using a rather large HD+ display size (2K), without enabling 3D acceleration.

00:00:02.230014 Host RAM: 8192MB (8.0GB) total, 4705MB (4.5GB) available
00:00:02.519353 RamSize <integer> = 0x0000000160000000 (5 905 580 032, 5 632 MB, 5.5 GB)
....
00:00:02.519731 3DEnabled <integer> = 0x0000000000000000 (0)
00:00:02.519739 VMSVGA3dEnabled <integer> = 0x0000000000000000 (0)

Changing nothing will result in nothing different happening. (I didn't discuss the two processors in the VM, because there's nothing that can be done about that.)

Host RAM can fluctuate, depending on what apps you have running, so you have to reduce host usage to run that much RAM in the VM, or reduce VM RAM to run that much on the host.

The last log ran for 13-ish minutes, this log ran for 3.5 hours. Doesn't sound like a VM OS problem to me.

I didn't encounter this problem and everything was quite smooth a month ago.

Things can change on a computer in a month: host OS updates, new hardware & peripherals, new apps...

Please make the changes that Mpack recommended about RAM and 3D acceleration, which will require Guest Additions in the VM, see https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch04. ... ions-linux and https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch02. ... nux-prereq

[katew]

Thanks to both of you for your detailed analysis and suggestion, I will try it.