VirtualBox GUI causes system slowness on linux hosts.

[Markus Duft]

Hey!

I don't have any log output that gives any evidence of the problem, but:

i have a dual-xeon system (E5530, so 2 physical cpus, 8 physical cores, 16 virtual cores) with 12GN RAM. if i have one vm (6 cores, 1.5GB RAM) running using the virtualbox SDL gui, and start compiling something on the host (16 jobs in the background), the desktop starts slowing down vastly (i.e. desktop effects hang, scrolling in terminals reduces to 1-update-per-second, applications react with a second delay, etc.). if i start the vm headless, and do the very same, the desktop keeps reacting as usual, no application slows down, etc.

btw. i have compiz running if that is of any relevance... i didn't try without though... should i?

and, as a side note: when the X server crashes (ever heard of the mieq problem with virtualbox), and a vm has been started using the sdl gui, shouldn't it be possible to save the vm state from the console? it currently isn't, as VBoxManage seems to wait for some reaction of VirtualBox, which it doesn't get, as that one in turn hangs somewhere in an X call...

regards, markus