VirtualBox: out of swap space

[Hubert Tournier]

Hello,


Samuel Martín Moro wrote:
> Sometimes, when I start a VM, all other running VM stop

Never had that. Though, when I can only launch one VM, it usually means that
there's a discrepency between my running FreeBSD kernel, FreeBSD userland,
VirtualBox kmod and/or VirtualBox. Syncing all of that usually solves the
issue.


Samuel Martín Moro wrote:
> 
> I see a few 'pid xxxx (VirtualBox), uid 0, was killed: out of swap space'
> I've got 8Gb of RAM, and so assumed I wouldn't need any swap.
> 

Just compute the free memory space after booting, without VirtualBox loaded
(you can see that with top or the following snippet):

PAGES_FREE=`sysctl -n vm.stats.vm.v_free_count`
PAGES_INACTIVE=`sysctl -n vm.stats.vm.v_inactive_count`
PAGES_CACHE=`sysctl -n vm.stats.vm.v_cache_count`
PAGES_LIBRES=`expr ${PAGES_FREE} + ${PAGES_INACTIVE} + ${PAGES_CACHE}`
TAILLE_PAGES=`sysctl -n vm.stats.vm.v_page_size`
MEMOIRE_LIBRE=`expr ${PAGES_LIBRES} \* ${TAILLE_PAGES} / 1048576`
echo "${MEMOIRE_LIBRE}M free memory"

Then subtract, for each VM, the RAM requested plus 100 MB, and 60 MB for the
two VirtualBox processes (rough values for headless VM).

If you are already negative (without doing anything else), then you will
either need to add swap (if you don't mind low performances) or reduce the
number of running VM or their memory requirements.


Samuel Martín Moro wrote:
> Have I to reinstall my server to add some swap? (and if so, how much?!)
> 

No, you just need to add a swap device somewhere. See
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/adding-swap-space.html in the handbook.


Samuel Martín Moro wrote:
> Second problem: When I'm creating a disk (in VirtualBox) [...] these
> guests display some gvfs errors, about not finding ad0.

If they don't find ad0, are you sure you declared an IDE controller(s) and
disk(s) in your guest VMs? (IDE=ad0 through ad3, SATA=ad4 and above).


Samuel Martín Moro wrote:
> I could have finished already if I just had installed a Linux host in the
> first place [...] Is there some hope sticking with BSD? [...] I'm
> seriously thinking on dropping that BSD idea, and choosing some random
> linux to make it work...

You should use the OS you're most comfortable with... or be prepared to make
some efforts! At least if you want people to help you...

Regards,

Hubert
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