Guru Meditation (HostMemoryLow) when low memory

[wacher]

I've resumed a virtual machine, but memory low. Expected result is a Paused VM state, but the VirtualBox simple crashed with guru mediation. (First occurence was founded in unofficial test build 4.1.7, see comment #9 of ticket #7929

[wacher]

Guru mediation when memory low

[wacher]

Sorry, I don't know why I wrote 'VERR_MAP_FAILED' in title. (I've checked #7929 previously, maybe this 'typo' came from there via copy+paste...) So, I would like to change title to GURU_MEDITATION

[Aleksandr]

Same thing on Win 7 x64 as host when try to install CentOS as guest. VM just crashes when something whith memory.

[gwaddell]

Zipped VM Log

[gwaddell]

I'm getting the same behaviour with VirtualBox 4.1.8r75467 running on a Windows 7 64 bit Host with 6 GB RAM, I've three guests set up on the machine, one with Windows 7 and the rest with Windows Server 2003.

If I try and run any (single) guest with over 1 GB RAM, I get the following error at "boot up"

Error ID: HostMemoryLow, Severity: Non-Fatal Error

The host machine then pauses and wont restart and I have to switch it off and take the RAM down to 1GB.

Also, if I'm running a 1GB RAM guest, and start another one to run concurrently, I get the same error on the second machine. Is there some sort of size limit set at 1GB RAM?

Host Details: windows 7 Professional 64 bit Service Pack 1, 6 GB Ram, Intel core i7-2620M CPU @ 2.7GHz Example Guest Details: windows 7 Professional 32bit Service Pack 1, 2048 MB Ram

Task Manager while Guest is running: CPU Usuage 1-3%, RAM 3.02GB used

I've attached a log file

[wacher]

The problem still exists in 4.1.9r75927. (Yes, I know that this is not an official release... but it is very annoying)

[gwaddell]

Replying to wacher:

The problem still exists in 4.1.9r75927. (Yes, I know that this is not an official release... but it is very annoying)

Hi, I have a solution, well it worked for me....

I had read other forum posts about ensuring hardware virtualisation was enabled and I checked on my machine and it was. BUT I went back into the BIOS and double checked and although it was enabled, it was only enabled for something called VT-A I changed this setting to one that said VT-A & VT-D supported and now not only can I run over a 1 GB Ram guest, I can run a 2GB ram guest and a 1GB ram guest concurrently too.

[Plazgoth]

I am seeing similar issue as well.

I have 8GB physical memory with 6.5 GB free when I try to start the VM with base memory set to 3584MB it fails.

Both the Guest and Host OS are Win 7 64Bit.

This VM has been working for the past few months with base memory set to 4096MB. Not sure what changed but I just started seeing this error tonight. Reducing the base memory to 3072MB gets it to boot.

The VirtualBox version I am using is 4.1.8 r75467

And I have checked in BIOS and VT-x is enabled.

[Markus Karnik]

Same issue with my System.

Host OS is Win 7 Ent 64Bit. Guest OS are Linux Mint 12 and Ubuntu Linux 10.04. Both 64 Bit.

The VM worked without any problems for the last couple of months. The problem appeared 2 days ago.

I was using version 4.1.8 r75467 and tried 4.0.16 yesterday. Unfortunatly i ran into the same problem.

[roygbiv]

Same problem. Host OS is Windows 2008 R2 64bit. Worked well 3 months, until last week, when it crashed with 2048MB of RAM, when it's 6GB total in system, and almost 5 are free. Log attached.

VirtualBox's version is 4.1.8 r75467

[froling]

O my.. I thought it was my computer hardware that has been broken. I have run all kind of memory checks and did not find anything wrong with my laptop. The reason that I suspected hardware errors is because of the fact that the screen start to flicker when the memory consumption begin to reach its limit of 8GB. I suspected that is could be Virtual Box release, the problems started when I updated the Oracle VM VirtualBox Extention Pack to version 4.1.8r75467 but I was not sure. It could be some windows update that could caused my flickering screen and virtual instances limitation of memory consumption. I'm still not sure of this, who am I going to blame, Microsoft or Oracle? No offense I like both of them. I deeply depending on them both. I uninstalled VirtualBox and downloaded an older version of VirtualBox, to my surprise it did not solve the problem, so it could be Microsoft that has released a Windows patch that has broken a feature in windows that VirtualBox depend upon. I could also be VirtualBox that don't revert all parts when I downgraded to it's previous version.

I sincerely hope that this is solved swiftly. I which I can contribute, but I lack the skill of programming OS or Viritualization software.

Host: Win7 64bit with 8GB mem, running several different guests (win 2008 r2, win 2008 32bit, win 2003, Ubunut 10.10, ...)

[cmkim]

Same problem. Host: Win7 64bit with 6GB mem, running single guest. a lot of available memory. Guest: Ubuntu 10.10

[c_lize]

Same issue here: Host Windows 7 64bit guest: Centos 5, w2k3... Using the resource monitor on the host, I can see that Virtualbox is unable to get the memory from the standby memory... Hope this help.

[Frank Mehnert]

Looks like a duplicate of #10219.

[wacher]

I think this newer ticket therefore that ticket should be duplicate of this :) Anyway I don't use GoogleCrashHandler64 or other similar thing.

This case is simple. 1) If there are not enough memory for VirtualBox then Vbox will be crashed. 2) If I have started my Microsoft Office before Virtualbox then virtualbox fails. If I have started my virtualbox before Office, then everything is OK.

[roygbiv]

Wacher, thanks for the tip from another ticket!

That's temporary solution for my problem - killing processes "GoogleCrashHandler64" and "GoogleCrashHandler" made my VMs WORK!!! From that point everything works, amount of RAM can be enlarged to my needs at any guest machine.

Google's frustrating with its shadow updater service :(

And more tips: suppose some applications are affected by GoogleCrashHandler too. For exmaple, X-Lite VoIP client won't start, some crashes occur while routine work in Windows.

[qonos68]

Solved on a Windows 7 64-bit system with Virtualbox 4.1.8r75467 simply disabling the "Execution Disable Function" in the machine BIOS. No Google Chrome was installed.

[wacher]

A new experience: #10278

[cyplo]

Same problem here, win7 64 host Attaching the log file. Maybe it migth have something to do with with nvidia drivers memory mapping ?

[grossetti]

Disabling the "Execution Disable Function" in the machine BIOS did not work for me. I have no Google products installed either. As described in my original ticket #10459 I get this when the host Windows OS runs out of RAM. It is a 32bit WinXP host (the physical machine and VM are 64 bit though).

[wacher]

This annoying "feature" is still present in 4.2 rc3.

The error log said: Unable to allocate and lock memory. The virtual machine will be paused. Please close applications to free up memory or close the VM

But the VM is not paused, just crashed. I don't have special processes neither any google stuff. I started too much VM and other application, I see. I ran out of memory actually, okay, but please, stay in paused mode (as the message promise it), I don't like this guru :(

[Frank Mehnert]

That's not a feature but a bug. The reason that it's not fixed yet is that the fix is quite difficult.

[Mihai Hanor]

Not to open another ticket (or should I?): VBox should at least warn the user, when starting a VM which has the RAM size set to a too high value (compared to the available host memory), to avoid the same Guru Meditation. Useful when migrating a VM to another host, that has less available RAM than the previous one, or when running the same VM under different OSes, which have different limitations (32 bit vs 64 bit, as an example).

[Matthijs Melchior]

This happens with Win7/64 host. Since I upgraded the host memory from 4Gb to 8Gb, and the VM memory from 2000 to 3072 Mb, whenever VM memory use approaches the 3Bb mark, The system runs into the GURU_MEDITATION state, and I have to close it.... The VM is running Ubuntu 11.10.

I hope my log and screenshot help in resolving this bug.

[Matthijs Melchior]

leading up to GURU_MEDITATION

[Matthijs Melchior]

screenshot at GURU_MEDITATION

[Frank Mehnert]

As we close other tickets as duplicates to this one I also want to add that there are known compatibility issues with ​Prio (Process Priority Saver). Removing this tool from the host fixes the issue for some users.

[orobardet]

Reproduced in the latest version 4.2.12 :

• Windows 7 60bit as Host
• Ubuntu 10.04 as Guest

I juste upgrade RAM of the host from 4Gb to 8Gb, and Guest memory from 1.5Gb to 4Gb. Now, one or two time a day, a warning of low host memory occurs (with about only 1.5G out of 4G used for the guest, and 5G out of 8G the host) when I do some simple task in the guest like refresh a page or click a link in firefox, or load a file in eclipse (with eclipse already loaded). The warning box says the VM is only paused and I need to free memory. There is plenty enough memory available (my host only runs an outlook and a firefox), ant the VM is not pause, it's crashed and in GURU_MEDITATION state. I need to restart it (and lost all unsaved data).

Before upgrading the host to 8Gb, I was using v4.2.10, and never had this error. Alought the guest was really slow (lake of RAM).

Attaching a log.

[Frank Mehnert]

Sorry for asking but do you have some special application installed like the above mentioned Prio application?

[atisho]

Is there a plan to fix this defect? If yes, when can we expect the fix? I can only allocate 2046GB memory for each vm and can only run one vm at a time. For my use cases, it pretty much makes virtualbox useless for me. I am switching to windows hyper-v which supports dynamic memory.

[Frank Mehnert]

We can only fix bugs which we can reproduce. A first step in helping debugging would be to answer my last question. Under normal circumstances these memory conditions will not happen. So if you experience this problem it is very likely that some application is installed which changes the behavior of the Windows memory subsystem.

[atisho]

tast list

[atisho]

I attached the file tastlist.txt which shows what processes my system is running. I don't think I am running Prio. Is there any other application you can easily recognize that causes this issue?

[tiria]

For solving the problem I used CCCleaner to disable the startup of Skype and all Toshiba tools together with Windows7_64 and I reinstalled VirtualBox. I was not able to identify the single program that was responsible of the problem. If you run skype and the various Toshiba tools after you run VirtualBox the problem will not manifest. It seems related to the startup phase only.

[Marco Henrique]

I have the same problem, i create a ticket without know this ticket. My ticket: #13140.

[DocenT]

Faced with the same problem.

Features Host: Windows 7 x64, AMD FX-6100, Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3 (rev.3.0), GeForce GTX 470, Corsair XMS3 CMX4GX3M1A1333C9 4 GB, Samsung M378B5673EH1-CH9 2GB, Samsung M378B2873EH1-CH9 1 GB AMD R332G1339U1S-UO 2 GB.

Throughout the program was to blame Prio v2.0.0.2960 (x64), after its removal VirualBox earned as before. The most interesting is the following: when the computer was one bracket Corsair 4GB memory, Prio quietly worked with VirualBox and all virtual machines run without problems. When I installed the remaining strips to the computer, no machine could not start, all the time there was an error HostMemoryLow, but the virtual machine Android x86 512MB RAM to run without problems. Problem solved :) Good luck.

P.S. thx translate.google.ru

[protte_]

ok just created my account to give a feadback and a solution to this problem.

I could reproduce this bug on my toshiba laptop. And it seems that the bug happens if a service from toshiba is running.

To solve this bug just disable under start->command->"msconfig" in Tab service

ConfigFree WiMAX Service ConfigFree Service

stoping the service dont work. they have to been shutdown at pc start.