VirtualBox memory usage in windows 7 less than expected

[Dio]

I'm possibly coming at this from the wrong angle as I'm largely new to virtualization.

I recently installed VirtualBox on my windows 7 machine. I created an ubuntu (12.10) machine for some development work on a specific project. I set the system's base memory to 512MB. My local machine has 4GB of memory total so this seemed reasonable. When I try running the machine, it works but it's unusably slow. I tried checking in windows task manager and it reports that the VirtualBox.exe application is consuming a working set of 112MB or memory, and the commit size is only 109mb.

Perhaps this is a gross misunderstanding of what's going on, but shouldn't I expect to see a commit size of closer to 512MB?

[Perryg]

This is acceptable. I would be interested in knowing if you have hardware virtualization and that it is enabled in the hosts bios.

[Dio]

According to intel processor utility:
::edit I don't have permission to post URLs, so you'll have to google the utility::

Yes, I have Intel(R) virutalization Technology.

I tried configuring the VM under System->Acceleration and disabled "Enable VT-x/AMD-V" although that seems to have had no effect.

Also within the VM, free -m says I'm using ~400MB of ram (a lot of which is irritatingly compiz).

So I guess I just don't quite understand what it means to say my VM has 512MB of ram if really it's only using 100MB? I feel like there's something fundamental I'm missing.

Thanks.

[Dio]

Also increasing the video memory size has greatly improved performance although I just swapped grub to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="text" which also fixed my speed issues.

Although I am curious about the memory usage. If it's too much to explain and you just want to link me to an article that'd be great too.

Thanks.

[Perryg]

Post the guests log file (as an attachment)
See Online Users Manual for the location of the file.

As well as the results of the following in the guests terminal

Code: Select all

/usr/lib/nux/unity_support_test -p

I need information before I can process the actual cause. Windows memory reporting is not always accurate. As you saw you had 400MB used in the guest but it was not showing in the host.

[Dio]

EDIT: Whoops, I didn't read your instructions very carefully. 1 min while I get you the other stuff.

dio@dio-VirtualBox:~$ /usr/lib/nux/unity_support_test -p
OpenGL vendor string: VMware, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 0x301)
OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 9.0

Not software rendered: no
Not blacklisted: yes
GLX fbconfig: yes
GLX texture from pixmap: yes
GL npot or rect textures: yes
GL vertex program: yes
GL fragment program: yes
GL vertex buffer object: yes
GL framebuffer object: yes
GL version is 1.4+: yes

Unity 3D supported: no

[Perryg]

This is why you are having a sluggish responce.

Ubuntu 12.10 switched to using software acceleration and I found this a while ago. That's why I pursued this investigation.
https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/11107

There are test builds that fix this issue but the next maintenance release should have the fix as well.

[Dio]

This is why you are having a sluggish responce.

Ubuntu 12.10 switched to using software acceleration and I found this a while ago. That's why I pursued this investigation.


There are test builds that fix this issue but the next maintenance release should have the fix as well.

Got it, thanks. That's why disabling the GUI helped too. But just for curiosity's sake, is there any reason why windows reports such a different memory usage? Is this just a case of Windows Task manager isn't terribly accurate?

[Perryg]

You know I have all but given up on Windows, especially the new version, so asking me why Windows memory manager is so lame is probably not going to get you an unbiased opinion. Anyway If you really want to know about the memory usage you should install sysinternals http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysi ... 95533.aspx that really does work.

[Dio]

You know I have all but given up on Windows, especially the new version, so asking me why Windows memory manager is so lame is probably not going to get you an unbiased opinion. Anyway If you really want to know about the memory usage you should install sysinternals (snip) that really does work.

Got it thanks a ton.

[AnotherLife]

How did Virtualbox and Ubuntu combo-fail turn into anti-Windows assumptions ?

Protip : In Windows process manager -> View -> Select columns

[Perryg]

Oh I don't know I guess being a MSCE I have some insight. Sysinternals which MS bought is far better than the MM built into Windows.
Have you used it yet?

Oh and I am an equal opportunity OS complainer. I point out the lame things Linux does as well.

[AnotherLife]

SysInternals tools are great, I use them a lot, especially sdelete for zeroing out my static VM disk before exporting to improve compression.

In order to give more value to my post, here is a page of a developer with a lot of freeware specialized Windows utilities, a few of these are golden, especially for system admins :
http://www.nirsoft.net/