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Slackware64-current crawling when VirtualBox is running

I had to reinstall my Slackware box some two weeks ago and every once in a while I need to fire up a VirtualBox VM which brings my system to a crawling state specially when I'm using a Java IDE (eclipse or netbeans) or server (tomcat or jboss). It seems to be something Java-related. Has anyone experienced this? Any ideas as how to solved it? I'll gladly provide any other informations necessary.

Thanks in advance,
gtludwig

That sounds like what happens if you've got too much RAM allocated to a virtual machine (or have two or more running and using up all the RAM)? Might want to check that.

Hope this helps some.

@troyane, thanks for the thought, but I don't think this is the case.
My box RAM is 4GiB and I always configure VMs to use a maximum of 1024MiB of RAM and 1 processor. And I try to use only one VM at a time. I know KDE's eats up some RAM, but still... occasionally it freezes up!

What's your CPU? Different CPUs have different support for virtualisation.

@bosth, there's always that!

Code:

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo 

processor        : 0

vendor_id        : AuthenticAMD

cpu family        : 15

model                : 107

model name        : AMD Athlon(tm) Dual Core Processor 5200B

stepping        : 2

microcode        : 0x83

cpu MHz                : 2693.172

cache size        : 512 KB

physical id        : 0

siblings        : 2

core id                : 0

cpu cores        : 2

apicid                : 0

initial apicid        : 0

fpu                : yes

fpu_exception        : yes

cpuid level        : 1

wp                : yes

flags                : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow rep_good nopl extd_apicid pni cx16 lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy 3dnowprefetch lbrv

bogomips        : 5386.34

TLB size        : 1024 4K pages

clflush size        : 64

cache_alignment        : 64

address sizes        : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual

power management: ts fid vid ttp tm stc 100mhzsteps



processor        : 1

vendor_id        : AuthenticAMD

cpu family        : 15

model                : 107

model name        : AMD Athlon(tm) Dual Core Processor 5200B

stepping        : 2

microcode        : 0x83

cpu MHz                : 2693.172

cache size        : 512 KB

physical id        : 0

siblings        : 2

core id                : 1

cpu cores        : 2

apicid                : 1

initial apicid        : 1

fpu                : yes

fpu_exception        : yes

cpuid level        : 1

wp                : yes

flags                : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow rep_good nopl extd_apicid pni cx16 lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy 3dnowprefetch lbrv

bogomips        : 5384.95

TLB size        : 1024 4K pages

clflush size        : 64

cache_alignment        : 64

address sizes        : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual

power management: ts fid vid ttp tm stc 100mhzsteps

Well it has the svm flag. Could something be disabled in your BIOS?

I have no idea whether a bitness difference between the host and guest can cause slowdowns. Is your guest 32 or 64-bit?

Host is Slackware64-current, guest is Windows XP x86.
I'll have to reboot to check BIOS settings...

Well, nothing there related to virtualisation. Since this is a HP box, I'm not that surprised!

what does top or ps say about CPU/Memory utilitization on your host machine while the slowdown is occurring?

Something you may want to look at (and, yeah, I know this will sound goofy but it'll give you a visual indication of what's going on).

Before you start VirtualBox, start GKrellM (it's included with Slackware) and slide the display over to the lower right corner or somewhere. Then start XP and keep an eye on the two CPU displays -- I've had XP ramp up to 100% on both CPUs for whatever reason XP does that (nope, I dunno, I just kill the damned thing and try not to use it). I think -- think! -- it might have something to do with the Guest Additions not being installed in "Safe Mode" in XP but I can't swear to that (I swear at XP enough to being with, though).

I've never had that problem with Win 7, only with XP, and the only "fix" I ever found was to blow away XP and reinstall it (then sit through the 100's of Critical Updates").

Hope this helps some.

It has todo with the fact that the athlon x2 does not have L3 cache. With a virtual machine running the processor runs out of cache and all memory operations have to come from main memory.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tronayne (Post 4621780)

Before you start VirtualBox, start GKrellM (it's included with Slackware) and slide the display over to the lower right corner or somewhere.

Thanks for mentioning this application. I had no idea it existed and looks great :).