virtualbox.org

Note the HostMemoryLow log entry below. It was not displayed. I saw it in the log, closed some running applications in the host, and successfully launched the VM.

Questions:
1, Why wasn't the HostMemoryLow message displayed, and
2, Wouldn't it make sense for VirtualBox to alloc memory BEFORE launching the VM?

VirtualBox 4.1.18 r78361 win.x86 (Jun 5 2012 16:31:21) release log
-snip-
00:00:02.038 ************************* CFGM dump *************************
-snip-
00:00:02.039 ********************* End of CFGM dump **********************
-snip-
00:00:02.044 ************************* CPUID dump ************************
-snip-
00:00:02.045 ******************** End of CPUID dump **********************
-snip-
00:00:41.216 VM: Raising runtime error 'HostMemoryLow' (fFlags=0x2)
00:00:41.217 AssertLogRel D:\tinderbox\win-4.1\src\VBox\VMM\VMMR3\VMM.cpp(1680) VMMR3EmtRendezvous: !pVCpu->vmm.s.fInRendezvous
00:00:41.217 Console: VM runtime error: fatal=false, errorID=HostMemoryLow message="Unable to allocate and lock memory. The virtual machine will be paused. Please close applications to free up memory or close the VM"
-snip-
00:01:05.571 ****************** Guest state at power off ******************
-snip-
00:01:05.585 ************** End of Guest state at power off ***************
-snip-
00:01:05.602 ************************* Statistics *************************
-snip-
00:01:05.643 ********************* End of statistics **********************
-snip-

The low memory warning is on the host side so allocating more memory would not help.
You would need to ask the DEVs about the reasoning of why or why not the message is only shown in the log file but host side memory issues are usually dealt with by the host.

Perryg wrote:...You would need to ask the DEVs about the reasoning of why or why not the message is only shown in the log file...

And I do this, how?

Ask for an explanation here bugtracker

Thank you Perryg. Submitted as Ticket #10767.

Closed.