Huge new memory leak

[luxifer]

It seems like since VirtualBox 4.0 there is some huge memory leak. I have a VM in which my firewall runs. It was created with a 3.2 Version of VirtualBox and transfered to a new server with VirtualBox 4.0. I even tried creating a new VM on the 4.0 host and just reusing the old disk image (I need this :-))

So the VM mainly does network i/o... nat, routing, vpn, firewall stuff...

The VM i configured like so:

• 192MB RAM, 5MB VRAM, OS: Linux 2.6
• Chipset: PIIX3, IO-APIC not active, no absolute pointing device
• 1 processor, pea/nx active
• VT and nested paging active
• no 3D accel
• no remote control
• ide controller ich6; sec master is dvd; uses host i/o cache
• sata controler ahci; port 0 is disk image; uses host i/o cache
• no audio
• 2x nic bridged to the same physical nic, using virtio
• no serial interfaces
• no usb
• no shared folders

oh and: no guest addition installation possible

It didn't even run for 24 hours and I have performance counters that makes the question why my server seems to slow down a no-brainer. As of the moment I just shut it down:

• Private Bytes: 8.442.504 KB (With Peak Private Bytes just a few KB above)
• Virtual Size: 8.575.196 KB
• Working Set 28.624 KB (Whaat?)
• Peak Working Set: 3.023.380 KB (Ah, got you... how many times did I tell you to clean up after you leave a mess???)

Thing is: that thing even started to route slower. Webinterface was slow. GUI was completely unresponsive - as were any other manager gui windows. Eventually I had to kill this thing.

Total CPU time of almost 24h of running was about 40 minutes. The VM process ran under "above normal" priority.

Host is Windows Server 2008 R2; VirtualBox 3.2.x worked fine!

So dear devs: could you fix it, please? :-) it's really nasty

if you need anything else to get to the root of this numbers, I'm happy to provide it, if i can.

[luxifer]

HAH, I got you twice, bad bug! I am able to reproduce the bug reliably!

Do the following:

• Boot the Linux VM (still boot menu, no kernel running :-))
• close the VirtualBox Manager Window (the one with the VMs listed, not the one with the VM of couse)
• Start VirtualBox again (reopen the VirtualBox Manager window via a Shortcut to VirtualBox)
• BAM: The Private Bytes of the VM just exploded from some Megabytes to whopping 4 Gigabytes in just the blink of an eye (an I'm not joking)

Do it as often as you will...

Workaround so far: Don't close that freakin Manager window... (but that kind-of sucks)

Cheers

[Frank Mehnert]

Please attach the VBox.log file of the VM session. The memory leak you observed could depend on the VM configuration.

[Alil]

I have same too and it is exactly reproducable
I think it can be related to other crashes too

Host: Win7 x64
Guest: WinXP SP3 x86

[luxifer]

There's no log entry when the bug takes place... I noticed though, that this bug seem to crash the VM that was started last. I have had a second VM running with Ubuntu Server 10.10 64 Bit. As soon as I triggered the bug *this* machine was hit by it... There's no log entry at this time though. So I give the log for this one...