From owner-freebsd-emulation@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jul 14 01:55:06 2011 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-emulation@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B6EF41065679 for ; Thu, 14 Jul 2011 01:55:06 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from Peter.Ross@bogen.in-berlin.de) Received: from einhorn.in-berlin.de (einhorn.in-berlin.de [192.109.42.8]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EDEA98FC23 for ; Thu, 14 Jul 2011 01:55:05 +0000 (UTC) X-Envelope-From: Peter.Ross@bogen.in-berlin.de Received: from localhost (okapi.in-berlin.de [192.109.42.117]) by einhorn.in-berlin.de (8.13.6/8.13.6/Debian-1) with ESMTP id p6E1t4rI002955; Thu, 14 Jul 2011 03:55:04 +0200 Received: from 124-254-118-24-static.bb.ispone.net.au (124-254-118-24-static.bb.ispone.net.au [124.254.118.24]) by webmail.in-berlin.de (Horde Framework) with HTTP; Thu, 14 Jul 2011 11:55:04 +1000 Message-ID: <20110714115504.20182xr8y5z7o3ug@webmail.in-berlin.de> Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 11:55:04 +1000 From: "Peter Ross" To: "Adam Vande More" References: <20110714095717.35581xj4rdju1pel@webmail.in-berlin.de> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; DelSp="Yes"; format="flowed" Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable User-Agent: Internet Messaging Program (IMP) 4.3.3 X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang_at_IN-Berlin_e.V. on 192.109.42.8 Cc: freebsd-emulation@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Network problems while running VirtualBox X-BeenThere: freebsd-emulation@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Development of Emulators of other operating systems List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 01:55:06 -0000 Quoting "Adam Vande More" : > On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 6:57 PM, Peter Ross > wrote: > >> Hi all, >> >> I have a problem with the network while running VirtualBox. >> >> As soon as I _run_ a VirtualBox I am not able to copy large files (e.g. >> virtual disks or ZFS snapshots) using ssh/scp to another machine. >> >> The ssh crashes with "Write failed: Cannot allocate memory" >> >> At the moment it is a real showstopper for running VirtualBox/FreeBSD >> production because I cannot backup VirtualBoxes. Mahlon gave up on it and >> uses Citrix by now (but is still keen to have this solved). >> >> Any idea what causes the problem? I am happy to gather information, >> applying patches etc. if it helps. >> > > Just a thought, does using ssh from ports make any difference? I am running named on the same box. I have overtime some errors there as wel= l: Apr 13 05:17:41 bind named[23534]: internal_send: =20 192.168.50.145#65176: Cannot allocate memory Jun 21 23:30:44 bind named[39864]: internal_send: =20 192.168.50.251#36155: Cannot allocate memory Jun 24 15:28:00 bind named[39864]: internal_send: =20 192.168.50.251#28651: Cannot allocate memory Jun 28 12:57:52 bind named[2462]: internal_send: 192.168.165.154#1201: =20 Cannot allocate memory Jul 13 19:43:05 bind named[4032]: internal_send: =20 192.168.167.147#52736: Cannot allocate memory coming from a sendmsg(2). My theory there is: my scp sends a lot data at the same time while the =20 named is sending a lot of data over time - both increasing the =20 likelyhood of the error. > Do you have > any more info about the threshold of file size for when this problem start= s > occurring? is it always the same? No, it varies. Usually after a few GB. E.g. he last one lasted 11GB =20 but I had failures below 8GB transfer before. The system itself is quite stable regarding running processes and =20 memory usage otherwise, here the description of it: This machine is running: - DHCP server (host) - NTP server (host) - Nagios monitor (nagios jail) - DNS server (bind jail) - MySQL server (mysql jail) - Apache server with ITWiki (apache jail) - Admin mail server (adminmail jail) - Zimbra 7.0 Mail server (zimbra VirtualBox) The machine has 8GB of RAM, and the footprint of the jails is minimal =20 (the MySQL server is for the mediawiki only which is used by two =20 people at the moment and not heavily). Here a top(1) sorted by size: last pid: 30169; load averages: 0.38, 0.41, 0.41 up 8+19:04:43 =20 11:51:39 159 processes: 1 running, 158 sleeping CPU: 0.4% user, 0.0% nice, 0.4% system, 0.0% interrupt, 99.2% idle Mem: 84M Active, 356M Inact, 4516M Wired, 1004K Cache, 33M Buf, 2943M Free Swap: 8188M Total, 8188M Free PID USERNAME THR PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE C TIME WCPU COMMAN= D 92688 root 24 44 0 2078M 1991M IPRT S 8 18.3H 5.86% =20 VBoxHeadle 4768 88 16 51 0 213M 21672K sigwai 8 2:02 0.00% mysqld 57180 www 1 46 0 140M 10344K accept 3 0:00 0.00% httpd 6223 www 1 76 0 139M 2400K accept 14 0:09 0.00% httpd 78674 www 1 44 0 138M 27056K accept 9 0:02 0.00% httpd 78924 www 1 44 0 138M 25928K accept 8 0:02 0.00% httpd 36114 www 1 44 0 138M 25424K accept 2 0:01 0.00% httpd 3997 www 1 44 0 138M 25180K accept 1 0:00 0.00% httpd 57410 www 1 44 0 138M 24476K accept 8 0:01 0.00% httpd 48202 www 1 44 0 138M 18488K accept 10 0:00 0.00% httpd 29695 www 1 44 0 134M 4920K accept 8 0:00 0.00% httpd > EG if Vbox has 2 GB mapped out and you > get an error at a certain file size, does reducing the Vbox memory footpri= nt > allow a larger file to be successfully sent? Given that the amount of data is randomly just now I cannot imagine =20 how to get reliable numbers in this experiment. While I am doing it I monitored the memory usage using top and vmstat =20 but there does not seem to be a shortage. I also tried lookbusy to occupy 2GB when VisualBox wasn't running. I =20 even put slightly more pressure on it as VirtualBox does (that means =20 the free memory was below the typical numbers when VirtualBox was =20 running) - but the result is the same: It works as long as I do not start the VirtualBox. Regards Peter