"Low Host Memory" crashes Guest when accessing large file in shared folder

[Jamie Macdonald]

Possible duplicate (marked solved in 6.0.14): https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/18766?cversion=0&cnum_hist=26

Host OS:

• Windows 10 Pro x64
• Version 1909
• OS build 18363.592
• VirtualBox version 6.1.2r135662

Guest OS:

• Arch Linux x64
• Kernel 5.4.13-arch1-1
• ​virtualbox-guest-modules-arch 6.1.2-3 installed
• ​virtualbox-guest-utils 6.1.2-1 installed

Machine specs

• 16GB RAM (8GB allocated to Linux guest)
• Intel Core i7-6820HQ CPU 2.70GHz (4 of 8 cores allocated to Linux guest)

Description to reproduce:

1. Add shared "Machine folder" with "Full" access. My folder is C:\Users\jamie\
2. Mount the folder manually via mount or /etc/fstab on the Linux guest
3. Place a large file (2GB OS .iso in my case) in shared folder from Host
4. execute a dd command to copy the iso to a local file in the guest - my command looks like this:

   dd if=down/ubuntu.iso of=./ubuntu.iso status=progress
   

The command copies 1.8GB out of 1.9GB in 107s then the guest gets paused and a pop-up error message appears with the following information:

An error has occurred during virtual machine execution! The error details are shown below. You may try to correct the error and resume the virtual machine execution.

Unable to allocate and lock memory. The virtual machine will be paused. Please close applications to free up memory or close the VM.

Error ID: HostMemoryLow Severity: Non-Fatal Error

After inspecting the log file, I found the following line which indicates an out-of-date version of guest additions:

00:00:17.736846 VMMDev: Guest Additions information report: Version 6.0.0 r127566 '6.0.0'

This is in contrast however to what VBoxClient and vboxservice.service report on the Guest:

VBoxClient -V
6.1.2r135662

sudo systemctl status vboxservice
● vboxservice.service - VirtualBox Guest Service
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/vboxservice.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
     Active: active (running) since Fri 2020-01-24 14:23:37 PST; 14min ago
    Process: 395 ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/modprobe vboxguest (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
    Process: 400 ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/modprobe vboxvideo (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
    Process: 402 ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/modprobe vboxsf (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
   Main PID: 403 (VBoxService)
      Tasks: 9 (limit: 9523)
     Memory: 3.2M
     CGroup: /system.slice/vboxservice.service
             └─403 /usr/bin/VBoxService -f

Jan 24 14:23:37 viper-arch systemd[1]: Started VirtualBox Guest Service.
Jan 24 14:23:37 viper-arch VBoxService[403]: 22:23:37.802052 main     VBoxService 6.1.2 r135662 (verbosity: 0) linux.amd64 (Jan 14 2020 22:33:16) release log
Jan 24 14:23:37 viper-arch VBoxService[403]: 22:23:37.802056 main     Log opened 2020-01-24T22:23:37.801171000Z
Jan 24 14:23:37 viper-arch VBoxService[403]: 22:23:37.802493 main     OS Product: Linux
Jan 24 14:23:37 viper-arch VBoxService[403]: 22:23:37.802552 main     OS Release: 5.4.13-arch1-1
Jan 24 14:23:37 viper-arch VBoxService[403]: 22:23:37.802601 main     OS Version: #1 SMP PREEMPT Fri, 17 Jan 2020 23:09:54 +0000
Jan 24 14:23:37 viper-arch VBoxService[403]: 22:23:37.802655 main     Executable: /usr/bin/VBoxService
Jan 24 14:23:37 viper-arch VBoxService[403]: 22:23:37.802656 main     Process ID: 403
Jan 24 14:23:37 viper-arch VBoxService[403]: 22:23:37.802657 main     Package type: LINUX_64BITS_GENERIC (OSE)
Jan 24 14:23:37 viper-arch VBoxService[403]: 22:23:37.806732 main     6.1.2 r135662 started. Verbose level = 0

Is this possibly a problem with my Guest Utils installation seeing as how the related bug was marked solved in 6.0.14?

Thank you for your time.

[Jamie Macdonald]

Guest Crash Log for dd-ing a large file from shared folder

[Jamie Macdonald]

The problem I discovered was that I needed to restart the Windows host after updating the VirtualBox host program from 6.0.0 to 6.1.2 - so this is clearly fixed and is a duplicate of that old bug.

Thanks for the hard work and great product!