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I'm using Linux Mint 8 Helena, and for the past few days have been noticing that I cannot put alot of "load" on my machine - especially when I start virtual box and load the WinXP guest OS from there.
The comp actually slows down SO BADLY, it's as if it's "frozen", and then the application just aborts. It also happens with Firefox.
I took a look at the system info and see that my swap partition is not being used at all. . Is this natural?
(When the attached snapshot was take, there were no apps like firefox or virtualbox running).
VBox "fixes" the memory you define for the guest - it is effectively taken away from the host system to use for anything else. Doesn't seem to be a problem for you.
The guest is just a disk file. So if the guest needs to do its own (virtualised) I/O, or needs to page, that all needs to happen in the host. You do have a lot of iowait - try this from a terminal session on the host
Code:
top -b -n 1 | awk '{if (NR <=7) print; else if ($8 == "D") {print; count++} } END {print "Total status D: "count}'
BTW, the reason you aren't using swap is that you don't have any ...
Last edited by syg00; 04-02-2010 at 07:58 PM.
Reason: Added BTW
VBox "fixes" the memory you define for the guest - it is effectively taken away from the host system to use for anything else. Doesn't seem to be a problem for you.
In virtualbox, I've given the guest OS no more than 192MB. The total physical RAM on my machine is 1GB.
Quote:
Originally Posted by syg00
The guest is just a disk file. So if the guest needs to do its own (virtualised) I/O, or needs to page, that all needs to happen in the host. You do have a lot of iowait - try this from a terminal session on the host
Code:
top -b -n 1 | awk '{if (NR <=7) print; else if ($8 == "D") {print; count++} } END {print "Total status D: "count}'
Here's the result:
Code:
top - 12:16:03 up 9:38, 2 users, load average: 0.62, 0.68, 0.49
Tasks: 202 total, 1 running, 196 sleeping, 0 stopped, 5 zombie
Cpu(s): 31.7%us, 4.9%sy, 0.1%ni, 61.3%id, 1.9%wa, 0.1%hi, 0.1%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 895628k total, 849048k used, 46580k free, 11700k buffers
Swap: 0k total, 0k used, 0k free, 97484k cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
Total status D:
BTW, when I ran the code you've given, VirtualBox is off. Should I start it along with the guest OS and then try this code again?
What's iowait?
Quote:
Originally Posted by syg00
BTW, the reason you aren't using swap is that you don't have any ...
how can that be? gparted shows me 5GB for the swap partition?
Thanks.
Everything was working so well when out-of-the-blue this problem started. Before this proble, I had actually allocated 384MB RAM to WinXP in VirtualBox and it was working so smooth.
Quote:
Originally Posted by syg00
Yes - it will only return anything meaningful if the "%wa is high. This is (generally) tasks waiting on I/O.
I tried to run this command with firefox running along with virtualbox and WinXP (the guest OS) all active but I just couldn't get WinXP to start with firefox and terminal open as virtualbox just kept crashing and closing down, so I had no alternative but to close down firefox then start WinXP thru VirtualBox and then run the command in terminal, so here's the result:
Code:
top - 07:29:42 up 3:23, 2 users, load average: 1.52, 1.68, 0.94
Tasks: 206 total, 2 running, 199 sleeping, 0 stopped, 5 zombie
Cpu(s): 25.0%us, 5.2%sy, 0.2%ni, 66.8%id, 2.5%wa, 0.1%hi, 0.1%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 895628k total, 851552k used, 44076k free, 1880k buffers
Swap: 0k total, 0k used, 0k free, 62460k cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
33 root 15 -5 0 0 0 D 0 0.0 0:03.30 kswapd0
Total status D: 1
Quote:
Originally Posted by syg00
You may have the partition, but you're not using it; probably UUID mismatch. Issue "blkid" and check the swap entry in /etc/fstab.
Could the swap not being used issue have been caused by a recent resizing I did of the swap partition?
Certainly - the mkswap will change the UUID - as I said, have a look at /etc/fstab fro the swap entry - put the UUID from the blkid in there.
kswapd is the swap daemon - you definitely don't want that in uninteruptible sleep (that's what status D is).
Fix the swap.
Certainly - the mkswap will change the UUID - as I said, have a look at /etc/fstab fro the swap entry - put the UUID from the blkid in there.
Here's what's currently in the /etc/fstab
Code:
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid -o value -s UUID' to print the universally unique identifier
# for a device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name
# devices that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
UUID=701130db-0c1a-4392-bbb6-88ee15dabc61 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
UUID=8f2583f6-d0a8-4902-96ad-a426b8da9841 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0
UUID=8f2583f6-d0a8-4902-96ad-a426b8da9841 none swap sw 0 0 this line ...
UUID=3ac9d5dd-3b71-4916-b4fe-7765352ecce7 none swap sw 0 0 needs to become this ...
Easiest way to update it is to use a fullscreen editor - presuming gnome, do this from a terminal (you'll get asked for your password)
UUID=8f2583f6-d0a8-4902-96ad-a426b8da9841 none swap sw 0 0 this line ...
UUID=3ac9d5dd-3b71-4916-b4fe-7765352ecce7 none swap sw 0 0 needs to become this ...
Easiest way to update it is to use a fullscreen editor - presuming gnome, do this from a terminal (you'll get asked for your password)
Code:
sudo gedit /etc/fstab
Thanks so much, syg00.
I now have firefox running along with WinXP thru VirtualBox. So far all seems OK, and the result of
Code:
top -b -n 1 | awk '{if (NR <=7) print; else if ($8 == "D") {print; count++} } END {print "Total status D: "count}'
is
Code:
top - 13:22:04 up 6 min, 2 users, load average: 1.43, 1.31, 0.64
Tasks: 202 total, 3 running, 194 sleeping, 0 stopped, 5 zombie
Cpu(s): 29.4%us, 15.7%sy, 2.6%ni, 38.3%id, 13.3%wa, 0.4%hi, 0.2%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 895628k total, 844376k used, 51252k free, 10692k buffers
Swap: 5196988k total, 105668k used, 5091320k free, 94564k cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
Total status D:
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