Guest freezes every 10 seconds or so in Ubuntu 9.10

[Fernando]

I am using Virtualbox 3.1.6 in Ubuntu 9.10

Any virtual machine I install keeps on freezing every 10 or 20 seconds. The guest freezes, not the host.

[Frank Mehnert]

Do you know if this is a regression, that is, did you ever install an older version of VBox and did you observe the same problem? Which host hardware is that?

[Fernando]

I had the same problem with version 3.1.6

What do you want to know about the hardware? It is an AMD...

[Fernando]

dmesg of virtual machine

[Fernando]

Sorry, I meant that I had the same problem with version 3.1.4

[Fernando]

host's cpuinfo

[Fernando]

I have fixed it by adding clocksource=acpi_pm to my kernel boot options, which means to /etc/default/grub inside GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT.

[Fernando]

It did not fix it, the freezes are back and the errors in dmesg too.

[Frank Mehnert]

Really strange and I have no idea. Does installing the guest additions into that guest change anything? Any chance to test another guest?

[Fernando]

I finally found a solution. I was using a PAE kernel, and all the guests were having the same problem.

I installed the generic kernel in the host, and now virtualbox works fine.

Is it normal to have problems with PAE kernels and virtualbox?

[Fernando]

Alhtough I have a laptop with PAE kernel and virtualbox works fine... Maybe it is the combination of PAE and AMD that does not work well...

[Frank Mehnert]

It is very unlikely that the PAE feature is the problem. Could you attach the kernel configs of both kernels to this defect?

[Fernando]

What are the kernel configs?

[Frank Mehnert]

That depends on your Linux distribution but this is usually the file /boot/config-KERNEL_VERSION.

[Frank Mehnert]

Still relevant with VBox 4.0.4?

[Frank Mehnert]

No response, closing.