Memory leak in 3d x64 linux addons on windows 7 x64 host when locking screen

[Wolfram]

Systems

• Windows 7 x64 host
• Linux (Ubuntu 11.04, x64) guest in a VM with the guest additions installed and 3d turned on. 1 GB of ram, two processors, 128 MB graphics memory allocated to guest. VT/x turned on.

Sympthoms

When locking the Windows 7 (hosts) screen, VM memory consumption gradually and linearly increases by approximately some megabytes every second. After having locked the screen for some minutes (~10-20) the VM takes up 8 GB of ram on my host (having only 8 GB of ram).

Workaround

Turning off 3d acceleration for the guest in VM settings fixes the issue (but guest switches back to Gnome instead of Unity).

Reproducing

• Boot up with a blank VM with 3d acceleration turned on using the Ubuntu Live CD (and a second disk with the guest addons iso image assigned to the VM)
• Install guest addons
• Restart desktop (AltGr+Print+k to restart X, log on using 'ubuntu' username and empty password) (check for active addons by dynamically resizing guest)
• Check memory consumption
• Lock screen in Windows 7 host
• Wait for some minutes, then unlock host
• Check memory consumption

[Meric Sentunali]

I'm having same issue on both virtualbox 4.1.6 and 4.1.8. My setup is windows 7 x64 host, ubuntu 11.10 x86 guest, 3d acceleration enabled, unity enabled.

[stratusfear]

This issue isn't limited to Ubuntu, either. I have the same issue under the same circumstances (3d enabled, memory leaks like crazy in Win7x64 lock screen) in both RHEL6 and Debian Squeeze as well.

[Meric Sentunali]

I think this issue is related to the display driver. I'm having this issue on my Dell XPS L502X laptop which has both intel integrated graphics and nvidia 540M discrete graphics. If I switch to integrated graphics, virtualbox works fine, if I use nvidia, virtualbox process leaks memory like crazy (about 2 gigabytes in 10 second if I play video in VM).

[aeichner]

Please reopen if still relevant with a recent VirtualBox release.