Guest Linux hangs on disk I/O every 30-60 min

[sasha29]

Hi, My Virtualbox is the latest 3.2.8, host WinXP 32bit, guest OpenSuse Linux 11.3. Every 30-60 min guest Linux hangs while trying to read/write to/from a disk. Sometimes it's accompamied by 100% use of one of CPU cores, sometimes - not. It seems like guest is infinitely waits for I/O from disk. While hanging, guest OS is responsing to mouse movements and clicks (buttons are raising on mouse move, terminals work) until the needed data are cached in memory. When they need to make disk I/O, they hang too, so finally everything waits for I/O and hangs. Host WinXP works perfectly, only guest freezes. Video mode, network, shared folders - do not affect. I tried 64-bit and 32-bit guest OpenSuse 11.3, it's the same. VDI disks are created in a standard way (expanding file) with limit of 30GB. Inside VDI there is 4Gb /dev/sda1 swap partition and 26gb /dev/sda2 ext4 root fs.

Help me please diagnose/fix the problem.

[sasha29]

Visual Studio 2010 Mini dump

[sasha29]

All threads of VirtualBox wait on RET at ntdll.dll!7c90e4f4()

7C90E4DA call 7C90E508 7C90E4DF mov eax,dword ptr [esp] 7C90E4E2 mov esp,ebp 7C90E4E4 pop ebp 7C90E4E5 ret 7C90E4E6 lea esp,[esp] 7C90E4ED lea ecx,[ecx] 7C90E4F0 mov edx,esp 7C90E4F2 sysenter 7C90E4F4 ret

[sasha29]

7C90E4DA  call        7C90E508  
7C90E4DF  mov         eax,dword ptr [esp]  
7C90E4E2  mov         esp,ebp  
7C90E4E4  pop         ebp  
7C90E4E5  ret  
7C90E4E6  lea         esp,[esp]  
7C90E4ED  lea         ecx,[ecx]  
7C90E4F0  mov         edx,esp  
7C90E4F2  sysenter  
7C90E4F4  ret  

[Kane O'Donnell]

VB Log (Win32 host, Ubuntu 10.04 64-bit guest)

[Kane O'Donnell]

Same problem for me, running Ubuntu 10.04 (64-bit) over Win32 XP SP3 as the host. Log attached. The problem is also apparent for VirtualBox 3.2.6.

[Frank Mehnert]

Your log shows the error message VERR_IO_CRC. This might point to some problems with the physical drive where the virtual disk image is stored. Is that an USB drive or USB stick? What happens if you store the virtual disk image on another drive?

[Kane O'Donnell]

It was a hard drive, and yes, it had a lot of problems. Had to get a new drive as there were 131Mb of bad sectors reported by CHKDSK in Windows. Most were outside the VirtualBox virtual disk so it's not a VirtualBox-specific problem. Thanks!

[Frank Mehnert]

Thanks kaneod for the feedback!

sasha29, is your problem still relevant with VBox 3.2.10? If so, could you attach a new VBox.log file?

[sasha29]

The original problem was the same for 32 and 64 bit guests. I localized that it happens if I turn on ACPI I/O and 2 CPUs for the guest. If I turn ACPI off and leave only one CPU to the guest, no problems at all for 32 and 64 bit guests.

My HDD on ThinkPad T400 has active Secure Boot and encryption if it does matter.

Just installed 3.2.10, turned ACPI and 2 CPUs in guest. Wait for results.

[sasha29]

3.2.10 has the same issue. Freezes with 32 and 64-bit Linux quests in ACPI mode with 2 CPUs. Sometimes, CPU is idle during freeze, sometimes 50% of two cores are consuming. Attached are new log and minidump files.

[sasha29]

2010-10-19 Visual Studio 2010 Mini dump

[sasha29]

2010.10.19 VirtualBox Freeze log file

[Paul Dorman]

Just a heads-up that this may be related to a regression with the 2.6.35 kernel. If you are running this kernel in your guest you may want to use an earlier release, or the latest release candidate for 2.6.36. See ​http://lkml.org/lkml/2010/8/1/40.

[sasha29]

I am running 2.6.34 default kernel from OpenSuse 11.3 distribution with the latest patches, kernel-default-2.6.34.7-0.4.1. The bug happens on all versions of kernels of this distribution. From the kernel changelog it's fixed in this kernel version.

• Mon Sep 13 2010 jslaby@…
  • Update to 2.6.34.7
    • obsoletes:
    • patches.fixes/vmscan-fix-stalls.patch

2.6.34.3:

• Thu Aug 12 2010 jslaby@…
  • patches.fixes/vmscan-fix-stalls.patch: vmscan: raise the bar to PAGEOUT_IO_SYNC stalls (bnc#625339).

[sasha29]

Hi, any ideas what's going wrong? It's the same for 3.2.8, 3.2.10 and all versions of kernels including the last one 2.6.36. Once ACPI and 2 CPUs are ON, the guest freezes after some time. Without ACPI and with single CPU is fine.

[sasha29]

Sorry, IO APIC, not ACPI.

[Nikita Krjukov]

It looks I have the same problem. I have the following configuration: Host: ThinkPad T410 Win& x64 Prof VirtualBox 3.2.12 Guest: OpenSuse 11.3 x64 with VBox Addition 3.2.12 Kernel "2.6.34.7-0.5-desktop" Hardware virtualization is On (VT-x/AMD-V + Nested Paging)

System usually hangs after several minutes of idling and only if more then 1 CPU is selected and IO APIC is On. Foxed/Dynamic virtual disk type doesn't matter.

[Frank Mehnert]

Still relevant with VBox 4.1.4?

[Janzert]

Yes, I've been seeing this on 4.1.4 and found this while looking for a solution. I've only disabled IO APIC for a short while but so far it does seem to have helped.

[Janzert]

So after upgrading to 4.1.6 and using it for some time now, disabling IO APIC seems to help very little if at all.

[aeichner]

Please reopen if still relevant with a recent VirtualBox release.