Memory leak on Windows 7 with 5.0.8 (and 4.3.32)

Discussions related to using VirtualBox on Windows hosts.
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HackerBaloo
Posts: 5
Joined: 20. Nov 2015, 10:45

Memory leak on Windows 7 with 5.0.8 (and 4.3.32)

Post by HackerBaloo »

I have been building VM's with Vagrant for a week or so, vagrant uses VBoxManage. Now I found that I'm at 90% of my 10 GB memory use and not many processes that use any memory to talk about. So then I checked SysInternals RAMMap, and I found 15583 VBoxManage zoombie processes.
According to this thread, this points to a buggy driver:
not a member long enough to post real urls :? : superuser DOT com SLASH questions SLASH 752435 SLASH how-to-get-rid-of-zombie-processes-without-parents-in-windows-8

Anyone else that have seen this problem, and if you have not noticed it yet, can you take a look with RAMMap if you find your memory use a bit high (not a member long enough to post real urls :? : google for RAMMap, hosted at microsoft)
Do you also have a lot of processes no longer in task manager, but in the processes tab of RAMMap?
Any suggestions on how to further investigate this issue. Can I try to reload some VirtualBox driver without rebooting to see if the memory is released?
mpack
Site Moderator
Posts: 39134
Joined: 4. Sep 2008, 17:09
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: VirtualBox+Oracle ExtPack
Guest OSses: Mostly XP

Re: Memory leak on Windows 7 with 5.0.8 (and 4.3.32)

Post by mpack »

Vagrant is a third party tool. Use with Vagrant is not supported here. Demonstrate that the official product has a problem when used in the official way, and get back to us.
HackerBaloo
Posts: 5
Joined: 20. Nov 2015, 10:45

Re: Memory leak on Windows 7 with 5.0.8 (and 4.3.32)

Post by HackerBaloo »

OK, I will try, but since Vagrant uses VBoxMange, it is really only a way of automating the use of VBoxManage, which I can also do with my own script, would that make it more official? And what I asked for was to see if someone else have experienced this problem and hints on how to further investigate it.
mpack
Site Moderator
Posts: 39134
Joined: 4. Sep 2008, 17:09
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: VirtualBox+Oracle ExtPack
Guest OSses: Mostly XP

Re: Memory leak on Windows 7 with 5.0.8 (and 4.3.32)

Post by mpack »

A fork is a fork. It doesn't really matter if they keep some of the names. As I said, demonstrate that the unhacked version of the product has the same problem, and get back to us.
HackerBaloo
Posts: 5
Joined: 20. Nov 2015, 10:45

Re: Memory leak on Windows 7 with 5.0.8 (and 4.3.32)

Post by HackerBaloo »

I will. But as far as I know Vagrant just uses the installed VboxManage which is part of the VirtualBox installation.
HackerBaloo
Posts: 5
Joined: 20. Nov 2015, 10:45

Re: Memory leak on Windows 7 with 5.0.8 (and 4.3.32)

Post by HackerBaloo »

I have now narrowed it down.
I ran (this machine is built without vagrant), with my machine just rebooted:
vboxmanage controlvm "Ubuntu Desktop" start (failed, since that is not the way to do it)
Then:
vboxmanage startvm "Ubuntu Desktop"
then I ran:
vboxmanage controlvm "Ubuntu Desktop" pause
vboxmanage controlvm "Ubuntu Desktop" resume
4 times
after this, I have no VBoxmanage processes in the Task Manager, but in RAMMat I have 5 zoombie processes each with 4 k Private and 16 k Page Table.
running the pause/ resume pair three more times resulted in 9 zoombie processes
HackerBaloo
Posts: 5
Joined: 20. Nov 2015, 10:45

Re: Memory leak on Windows 7 with 5.0.8 (and 4.3.32)

Post by HackerBaloo »

Then I tried this on a 2.1 MB vmdk:
vboxmanage clonemedium c:\dev\pct\external\VM\code.vmdk 1
vboxmanage clonemedium c:\dev\pct\external\VM\code.vmdk 2
vboxmanage clonemedium c:\dev\pct\external\VM\code.vmdk 3
vboxmanage clonemedium c:\dev\pct\external\VM\code.vmdk 4
vboxmanage clonemedium c:\dev\pct\external\VM\code.vmdk 5
vboxmanage clonemedium c:\dev\pct\external\VM\code.vmdk 6
vboxmanage clonemedium c:\dev\pct\external\VM\code.vmdk 7

It gave me another 2 zoombie processes, so I would say it looks like some kind of race condition since it doesn't always result in zoombie processes. I will now continue to try this on 5.0.10 and the latest test build. I'm also curious to see if someone else can reproduce this problem.
Perryg
Site Moderator
Posts: 34369
Joined: 6. Sep 2008, 22:55
Primary OS: Linux other
VBox Version: OSE self-compiled
Guest OSses: *NIX

Re: Memory leak on Windows 7 with 5.0.8 (and 4.3.32)

Post by Perryg »

First I would try version 5.0.10 and if you still see the zombies post a ticket at bugtracker
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