FreeBSD -CURREEN/x64 as guest in VirtualBox 4.3 -- freezes HOST system under load (VirtualBox 4.2 is Ok)

From: Lev Serebryakov <lev_at_FreeBSD.org>
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 2014 14:37:32 +0400
Hello, FreeBSD.

 After upgrading VirtualBox (Windows host) to 4.3.x, FreeBSD guest starts to
spent a lot of time in swi4:clock:

  PID USERNAME   PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE   C   TIME    WCPU COMMAND
   11 root       -60    -     0K   176K WAIT    0  29:13  18.99% intr{swi4: clock}

 Also, host becomes almost unusable, as half of keyboard presses are missed
and other are multiplied and mouse is chaotic.

 It looks to be connected to complex/mixed workload (like "make -j4
buildworld buildkernel") as pure-CPU load (like xz-ipping /dev/zero to /dev/null) and
pure-I/O load (like dd'ing from /dev/zero to virtual disk) doesn't cause this behavior.

 FreeBSD (exactly same VM configuration) doesn't have this problem on
VirtualBox 4.2.x.

 VM is 2 CPU (out of 4 physical), 4Gb of RAM (out of 8 physical) ICH9, I/O
APIC, virtual SATA controller (AHCI mode) with 3 virtual disks, that's all.

 Timers in system:

kern.eventtimer.et.LAPIC.flags: 15
kern.eventtimer.et.LAPIC.frequency: 500014822
kern.eventtimer.et.LAPIC.quality: 400
kern.eventtimer.et.i8254.flags: 1
kern.eventtimer.et.i8254.frequency: 1193182
kern.eventtimer.et.i8254.quality: 100
kern.eventtimer.et.RTC.flags: 17
kern.eventtimer.et.RTC.frequency: 32768
kern.eventtimer.et.RTC.quality: 0
kern.eventtimer.choice: LAPIC(400) i8254(100) RTC(0)
kern.eventtimer.singlemul: 4
kern.eventtimer.idletick: 0
kern.eventtimer.timer: LAPIC
kern.eventtimer.periodic: 0

 I think, it is new VBox version problem, but I want to be sure before
reporting it to Oracle's bugtracking, as FreeBSD is not usual guest system
and I don't want bug to be ignored :)

-- 
// Black Lion AKA Lev Serebryakov <lev_at_FreeBSD.org>
Received on Wed Jan 22 2014 - 09:37:40 UTC

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