virtualbox.org

Hello all,

I'm on Ubuntu Intrepid (64 bit machine), and am running XP Pro (32 bit version) in VBox. I noticed that after installing the latest version of Vbox that I was not able to allocate much more than about 1,800 - 1,900 MB of RAM when installing Windows (the "Next" button actually greys out when you move the slider past this point).

For now I have installed the previous version, which works fine. Is this a bug in the new version, or am I missing something? I noticed that the version I'm using currently using doesn't differentiate between XP 32 bit and XP 64 bit, whereas the latest version gives you this option (I chose 32 bit XP). Could this possibly be something to do with it?

Any help would be very much appreciated. Cheers.

I just tested it with my own machine, which has 3 GB of RAM (running xubuntu 32 bit as Host). Trying to set more than half of my RAM during the creation disabled the next button too. If you open an existing VM, you see a warning when you set more RAM. It says this:

On the General page, you have assigned more than 50% of your computer's memory (2.97 GB) to the virtual machine. Not enough memory might be left for your host operating system. Continue at your own risk.

If you go even further, the messages goes to this:

On the General page, you have assigned more than 75% of your computer's memory (2.97 GB) to the virtual machine. Not enough memory is left for your host operating system. Please select a smaller amount.

So it's a safety measure to make sure the VM will boot, which would otherwise fail if you don't have enough free RAM.

I'm not entirely sure but I think Virtualbox considers reserving more than half of your available RAM memory for your virtual machine unadvisable.

May not be adviseable, but it is what I want to do! I agree with you both - pal of mine tried the same with 1 GB of RAM, and it stopped you allocating any more RAM to guest at just under half of this.

I have 4 GB of RAM, and I want to assign exactly half of it to my XP guest, which it won't let me do. Am running SolidWorks on a frequent basis, so I really need 2 GB of RAM as a bare minimum. Have never had any problems in the past using this amount of RAM, but I will let you all know if anything untoward happens.

So, I'm sticking with the previous version for now, which is a shame as I really wanted to try out the OpenGL stuff. Would it not be better to have a message that comes up when allocating the RAM, not only to warn of the dangers, but also to explain why the "Next" button is greying out on you!!! And then let people allocate however much RAM they want!

Purps, you can't create a VM with half or more RAM as you have, but you can increase it after you created it. Boots just fine on my end (though not all of it was allocated after VM boot).

But will this make the error message that you mentioned previously come up?

Happy New Year!

purps wrote:But will this make the error message that you mentioned previously come up?

Happy New Year!

Not if you set it below 75% or 80% of the Host max memory. It will only show a warning message in the settings window, that's all.

I was looking for some bug report about amount of RAM in the guest machine when running VBox 2.1.0, but all that I have found is this post.

Ok, I understand what was said above. But my problem is different. The guest OS reports less RAM Memory than the specified in the Virtual machine settings.

I'm running VBox 2.1.0 in a gentoo installation, recent kernel. My virtual machine is a FreeBsd. Here is what is going on: I was installing some older versions of FreeBSD like 5.5, 6.2 and even the newest one 7.1-RELEASE in order to make some updates tests on this OSes. And I was getting problem when compiling anything. I got some messages related to ram.(not enough ram memory)

FreeBSD doesn't have a specific way to find out how much RAM memory is installed on your system. But I was kinda suspecting VBox was fooling me. Any way, I confirmed my RAM memory inside the FreeBSD has less than 100Mb, However is set to 512Mb.

Just to make sure that was the new vbox fooling me, I downgraded to older versions like 2.0.6 and 2.04, and this time I got the exact amount of ram inside the BSD system.

Is for sure that there is an issue with RAM memory with FreeBSD as guest.

Maybe someone can suggest create new virtual machines, because could have corrupted the configuration files migrating from on version to another. But after every new installation I tried to create a new virtual machine from the scratch and delete the existent ones. Without success.

I also tried 200Mb of RAM. Also unsuccessfully try.

I just tested with a XP VM, and it's working properly. The problem seems to be FreeBSD as guests.

What you guys need logs? config files?

Thanks!!

lutierigb wrote:The guest OS reports less RAM Memory than the specified in the Virtual machine settings.
...
FreeBSD doesn't have a specific way to find out how much RAM memory is installed on your system.

In your FreeBSD guest, can you please run On my Ubunut and Debian guests, the correct amount of ram seems to be reported. I'm curious to see if you have less than you think you should have.

Stéphane

stephanecharette wrote: In your FreeBSD guest, can you please run

Code: Select all

cat /proc/meminfo

On my Ubunut and Debian guests, the correct amount of ram seems to be reported. I'm curious to see if you have less than you think you should have.

Stéphane

Sorry, but procfs is not used and mounted by default in FreeBSD's, even if you mount it, it just contains info about the process running. No cpuinfo or meminfo.

But I can check the amount of RAM in the system using the top utility.

But I don't care anymore, if you guys want some logs I can provide them. Actually I gave up on that.

My last try was run a older version in order to have enough RAM, but now every now and then I got a sigreturn eflags error that almost freezes the whole system.

Screenshot
http://picasaweb.google.com/lutierigb/C ... 0349120274

log
http://pastebin.com/f47c7dcaf

Posting that on the forum wont do any good. This forum is a bunch of VirtualBox end users like you and me.

For Sun's VirtualBox team to notice the problem, you have to enter a bug ticket. http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Bugtracker

Stéphane