heavy load caused by: "VBoxManage guestcontrol execute --wait-for exit ..."

[Paolo Virtual]

when waiting for a blocking program in the guest called by

"VBoxManage guestcontrol execute --wait-for exit ..."

there is a significant increase in CPU load on the host. This is caused by both processes VBoxSVC as well as VirtualBox, although the program in the guest does not cause any load within the guest. This behavior was observed, on Windows 7 and Linux hosts, with VirtualBox Versions 3.2.10, 3.2.12 as well as Beta 4.0.

[Paolo Virtual]

The bug is still persistent in Versions 4.0 and 4.02 as well as SVN-revision r35773.

[Frank Mehnert]

Duplicate of #8235.

[Paolo Virtual]

Unfortunately the load is still there, caused by VBoxService within the guest (see attachment).

[Frank Mehnert]

Which additions version is that?

[Paolo Virtual]

Replying to frank:

Which additions version is that?

We tried with the guest additions of Versions 4.0, 4.02 and meanwhile also SVN-revision r35820. To make it clear, the 'wait-for-exit' issues from #8235 are fixed, but the heavy load is still there.

[Frank Mehnert]

r35831 should improve the behavior. This changeset will be included in the next maintenance release. The cause of the CPU load is busy waiting of VBoxManage for the termination of the guest process. Changing this would require an API change, therefore a change is not possible in short term.

[Frank Mehnert]

4.0.4 contains a partial fix.

[Anton]

Execution guest programms without "waiting-for-exit" heavy loads CPU too. CPU is about 100% until the guest process off. The same process running in the virual machine manually does not load CPU more than 10%.

This bug is reproduced by CLI utility VBoxManage and by API load IGuest.executeProcess().

This bug does not still fixed by 4.0.4 virtualbox version.

[andy_9_9_9_9]

In my case, version 3.2.10 still works. However. I just upgraded my system to squeeze. And somehow sequeeze does not work with 3.2.10 anymore (due to some NMI_WATCHDOG not found anymore). So now I am really stuck.

[Frank Mehnert]

Should be fixed in VBox 4.0.6.