Arch Linux

roviq

Member

Registered: 2022-10-17

Posts: 3

VirtualBox 7.0.20 VERR_NO_LOW_MEMORY

I'm unable to start any VirtualBox machine, and receiving the error VERR_NO_LOW_MEMORY, however this is a workstation with 96GB of RAM and with only 20GB in use at the moment.

Any ideas what could be going on? Just upgraded to Linux kernel 6.10.0, so may it be related? vboxdrv module and dependencies are loaded fine.

Last edited by roviq (2024-07-26 00:40:48)

roviq

Member

Registered: 2022-10-17

Posts: 3

Re: VirtualBox 7.0.20 VERR_NO_LOW_MEMORY

Hmm, wait a minute, noticed with 'free' command that buff/cache is filled up with 70GB, so there are less than 1GB of RAM "really-available" in this system, after forcing a "purge" with:

echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

Now VirtualBox is working again... this shouldn't have happened, does kernel 6.10.0 has a new memory/page allocator that doesn't make up space for continuous RAM allocation?

Should I tag this as [SOLVED]? Or is there an issue with memory allocation? First time I experience this with VirtualBox and Linux, usually my RAM is fully used in terms of buff/cache, so this wasn't an issue before.

Last edited by roviq (2024-07-26 00:40:35)

injiniero

Member

Registered: 2022-04-26

Posts: 12

Re: VirtualBox 7.0.20 VERR_NO_LOW_MEMORY

I had this issue this morning too with 30Gb of free memory.
Updating linux to 6.10.1 and virtualbox-host-modules-arch to 7.0.20-5 the issue has gone. I have no more info about that issue.

agaskew

Member

Registered: 2024-08-08

Posts: 1

Re: VirtualBox 7.0.20 VERR_NO_LOW_MEMORY

Hmm, wait a minute, noticed with 'free' command that buff/cache is filled up with 70GB, so there are less than 1GB of RAM "really-available" in this system, after forcing a "purge" with:

echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

Now VirtualBox is working again... this shouldn't have happened, does kernel 6.10.0 has a new memory/page allocator that doesn't make up space for continuous RAM allocation?

Should I tag this as [SOLVED]? Or is there an issue with memory allocation? First time I experience this with VirtualBox and Linux, usually my RAM is fully used in terms of buff/cache, so this wasn't an issue before.

Thanks! I had the same issue today with VirtualBox 7.0.20 r163906 and 6.10.3. - the 'available' amount from 'free' was low despite this machine actually having 28Gb free and the VM memory set to 8Gb.  Forcing the purge fixed the issue.

jghodd

Member

Registered: 2013-02-10

Posts: 159

Re: VirtualBox 7.0.20 VERR_NO_LOW_MEMORY

I'm still getting this with Linux 6.10.6 and virtualbox host mods 7.0.20-13 - all up to date. I appreciate the workaround (getting tired of rebooting), but there's an underlying problem here that's not getting fixed.

Can anyone provide some update on if or whether this is being fixed, and maybe a when?

herOldMan

Member

Registered: 2013-10-11

Posts: 152

Re: VirtualBox 7.0.20 VERR_NO_LOW_MEMORY

I am also having this problem with multiple Arch natives, most of which have 32 Gb physical memory and one of which has 64 Gb physical memory. All VMs have less that 1/2 of the physical memory allocated to the VM; (in one case less than 1/8th).

Over several years I have not seen this behavior before.

I am investigating the problem now on one of these machines and, in fact, when the Vbox memory fault occurred the free memory was low and the cached memory was high.