Windows10 VM Running on MacOS Catalina using twice the allocated RAM

Discussions related to using VirtualBox on Mac OS X hosts.
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Alan.Elliott
Posts: 2
Joined: 19. Mar 2020, 18:00

Windows10 VM Running on MacOS Catalina using twice the allocated RAM

Post by Alan.Elliott »

Hello,

Have an issue where MacOS is showing that the amount of RAM that is being used by a VM in VirtualBox as double what has been allocated. Searching around, was unable to find any post with a similar issue that might point to the problem. I'm running Catalina 10.15.3, When allocating 8GB of RAM to the VM, Activity Monitor and top show it using ~16GB. When I drop it to 4GB of RAM it uses ~8GB of RAM. This occurs immediately on boot of the VM, it does not slowly grow to that size, so I don't think it's a caching or memory leak issue. Wondering if anyone has seen something similar, and what it may be. (Uploading SS of the RAM settings of the VM and the process line in activity monitor for the VM)

Cheers.
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scottgus1
Site Moderator
Posts: 20965
Joined: 30. Dec 2009, 20:14
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Windows, Linux

Re: Windows10 VM Running on MacOS Catalina using twice the allocated RAM

Post by scottgus1 »

Apparently this is a new issue on Mac hosts, see viewtopic.php?f=8&t=97149 and viewtopic.php?f=8&t=97181

Reverting to 6.1.2 apparently fixes it according to 'vboxuser799' viewtopic.php?f=8&t=97181#p471956
Alan.Elliott
Posts: 2
Joined: 19. Mar 2020, 18:00

Re: Windows10 VM Running on MacOS Catalina using twice the allocated RAM

Post by Alan.Elliott »

Perfect, thanks for the reply scottgus1. Sorry I didn't see those posts previously, I had been googling the issue but got nothing back.

Cheers.
sygibson
Posts: 2
Joined: 17. Jul 2020, 16:38

Re: Windows10 VM Running on MacOS Catalina using twice the allocated RAM

Post by sygibson »

Confirmed on my side. Since 6.1.3 and through 6.1.12 - any VM assigned memory will end up with actual consumption on host (Mac OS X 10.14.6 Mojave) consuming just over 2x the amount of memory.

Downloading and installing the 6.1.2 version, and restarting the VM returns to just a touch over 1x memory usage.
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