virtualbox.org

Starting with v6.1.8, I have noticed that there appears to be a substantial memory leak when running Linux Mint 19.2 on Windows 10 Home. This problem appears to occur in 6.1.10 as well.

Simple environment is VB 6.1.10 running on Windows 10 Home, 6 core AMD Phenom II X6 1035T, 16GB memory w 10 GB allocated to VB, 256GB SSD plus 10TB HDDs, VB VDI installed on separate 256GB SSD.

Symptom: Windows memory will be totally used after runnning VB/Linux and doing software development (lots of searches/edits/compiles) in C++ and julia. Even after Linux applications are stopped, Windows memory is not released. System starts thrashing and performance goes down the tubes after several hours of development.

I have been running this combination of Linux on VB on Windows 10 for several years now and have not had this problem.

Is anybody else seeing this problem with VB 6.1.8/10 on Windows 10?

(More technical details available if needed.)

Thanks

Reading your description so far, I can imagine a scenario in which your observations are perfectly valid:

For a moment, let's assume that your Windows host uses 8 GB, and there are 8 GB free. If you then start the Linux VM, it will typically only use 1 or 2 GB in the beginning, so you won't notice any problems. After running for some minutes or hours (depending on your workflow), the Linux VM will use the total allocated 10 GB, until it is shut down, and your Windows host could be thrashing.

If you haven't done so already, you should examine the memory usage inside the Windows host OS (and/or provide some numbers, and a VBox.log file). Note that VirtualBox will be using between 10 and 11 GB of physical (not virtual) host memory when your VM is running.