Memory management changes after kernel update on 6-Aug

Kevin Oberman rkoberman at gmail.com
Sat Aug 10 00:34:33 UTC 2019


On Fri, Aug 9, 2019 at 2:16 PM Mark Johnston <markj at freebsd.org> wrote:

> On Fri, Aug 09, 2019 at 01:05:50PM -0700, Kevin Oberman wrote:
> > On Fri, Aug 9, 2019 at 11:35 AM Mark Johnston <markj at freebsd.org> wrote:
> >
> > > On Fri, Aug 09, 2019 at 11:09:24AM -0700, Kevin Oberman wrote:
> > > > Since I updated my 12.0-STABLE system on 6-Aug I have been seeing
> issues
> > > > resuming my Win7 VM on VirtualBox. My prior kernel was built on
> 24-Jul.
> > > If
> > > > there is not sufficient memory available to reload the system (4
> Meg.),
> > > the
> > >
> > > Where does this number come from?  What memory usage stats do you see
> in
> > > top(1) when the error occurs?
> > >
> >
> > I am monitoring memory usage with gkrellm. It appears to define "Free" as
> > the sum of "Inactive" and "Free". If you are referring to size of the VM,
> > was supposed to be the memory specified when I created the VM, but my
> > fingers got ahead of my brain and it should have been 4G, not 4M. Hey!
> > What's a few orders of magnitude?
> >
> > Oddly, when I watch memory space closely I note that, as the VM loads, I
> > started seeing swap utilization increase as free space was exhausted at
> > about 80% loaded. Loading continued to 98%. at that point loading stopped
> > and swap use continued to grow for a bit. Then free space started to
> > increase from about 300M to about 700M before the error window popped up.
> >
> >
> > > > resume fails with a message that memory was exhausted. Usually I can
> try
> > > > resuming again and it will work. Sometimes I get the error two or
> three
> > > > times before the system resumes.
> > >
> > > What exactly is the error message?
> > >
> > Failed to open a session for the virtual machine Win7.
> >
> > Failed to load unit 'pgm' (VERR_EM_NO_MEMORY).
> >
> > Result Code: NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005)
> > Component: ConsoleWrap
> > Interface: IConsole {872da645-4a9b-1727-bee2-5585105b9eed}
> >
> >
> > >
> > > > Since I have not touched VirtualBox other than to rebuild the kmod
> after
> > > > the kernel build, it looks like something in the OS triggered this.
> Since
> > > > the system frees up some memory each time so that the VM eventually
> > > > resumes, it looks like the memory request is made to the OS, but VB
> is
> > > not
> > > > waiting or not enough memory is freed to allow the VB to complete the
> > > > resume.
> > > >
> > > > Any clue what might have changed over those 13 days? I am running
> GENERIC
> > > > except that I run the 4BSD scheduler.
> > >
> > > Possible culprits are r350374 and r350375, but I can't really see how.
> > >
> >
> > This started after the 6-Aug build (r350664). My prior build was r350292,
> > so just before these two commits.
> >
> > Can I try just reverting these two? Once I do, it will need to run for a
> > while or do something to tie up a lot of memory before the error will
> > recur. In normal use it is a matter of firefox increasing resident memory
> > until there is not enough free memory to load the VM without swapping.
> > (These days I often see the sum of all firefox process resident memory
> > exceeding 3G after it's been up for a day or two. Still, not worse than
> > chromium.)
>
> Those commits can simply be reverted, but I am skeptical that they will
> help.  You should also verify that these same conditions don't lead to
> errors on your prior build, if you haven't already.
>

OK. Running identical kernel except for 350374-5.

Yes, I am sure that it was not happening with the r350292 kernel. I hit
this quite consistently when firefox has been running for a while.

Firefox has rss of just under 3G on startup and will slowly grow until I
don't have the resources to run the Win7 VM without the error. Right now
the VM completes loading with no swapping and about 800M of memory free
after it is running. I'll let you know when it gets big enough to cause a
problem and whether it fails. Probably won't happen until tomorrow.
--
Kevin Oberman, Part time kid herder and retired Network Engineer
E-mail: rkoberman at gmail.com
PGP Fingerprint: D03FB98AFA78E3B78C1694B318AB39EF1B055683


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