Virtual Box error

Ask Fedora
1

Having a weird issue with VitualBox today. Happens with all my VMs, be it Windows 11 client or Linux client. They worked fine before (last I fired up a VM was last weekend). Normally use the VirtualBox package from F41, but I also tried the build form Oracle’s site. Same error when attempting to start a VM:

VM Name: Windows 11

Out of memory condition when allocating memory with low physical backing. (VERR_NO_LOW_MEMORY).
Result Code:
NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005)
Component:
ConsoleWrap
Interface:
IConsole {6ac83d89-6ee7-4e33-8ae6-b257b2e81be8}

My host system has 64BGB of RAM and all the VMs have from 8GB to 16GB allocated. And as I mentioned, they worked fine before. Don’t recall any F41 update that could be causing this.

2

It sort of fixed itself. Strange. A reboot did it. Hopefully the error does not pop up again.

3

Hi Melcar,
I had the same issues last week. It has something to do with the system cache. If the cache is too large you are not able to start a new virtual machine.
use
sudo sysctl vm.drop_caches=3
to clear the cache
Eventually fedora will crash.
I added this task to crontab until the problem is solved propperly.

1 Like
4

Good to know. If it pops up again I will try that.

5

Had the same issue once a couple of days ago, when I restarted the system it never occurred again.

@fulco, what do you mean by “eventually fedora will crash”:

  1. It will crash when you do issue this command, or
  2. it will crash if you don’t issue this command.

Just curious, I guess I’ll find out anyway… If it is the 2nd answer, it might explain the random crashes that I have been experiencing lately.

6

Daniel,

Since Fedora 40 I have lots of problems with Win10 on VBox.

  1. Win10 will not shutdown, soft poweroff needed after 12 hours
  2. Win10 boots with system recovery, which will take days
  3. Fedora hangs within a day, reason not known yet. Without Win10 virtual machines everything works fine
  4. Cache problems

Upgrade to Fedora41 does not solve any problem.

7

Well that’s too bad. I have Win11 in a VirtualBox and do not observe problems #1 and #2 from your list; regarding #3 I’m not so sure and #4 I probably experienced once (plus the thread starter). My computer has 64 GB RAM too.

(PowerPoint predictably prevents Win11 from shutting down, it has to be forcefully killed. However, I have subscribed to the Office early access program or whatever it’s called – beta versions, feature previews.)

FWIW my VirtualBox was installed from RPM Fusion.

$ sudo dnf info virtualbox
# ... snip ...
Installed packages
Name            : VirtualBox
Epoch           : 0
Version         : 7.1.4
Release         : 1.fc41
Architecture    : x86_64
Installed size  : 51.9 MiB
Source          : VirtualBox-7.1.4-1.fc41.src.rpm
From repository : <unknown>
Summary         : A general-purpose full virtualizer for PC hardware
URL             : https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/VirtualBox
License         : GPL-3.0-only AND (GPL-3.0-only OR CDDL-1.0)
Description     : VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for
                : enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature
                : rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only
                : professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under
                : the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2.
                :
                : Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh, and Solaris hosts and
                : supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to
                : Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows
                : 10), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4, 2.6, 3.x and 4.x), Solaris and OpenSolaris,
                : OS/2, and OpenBSD.
Vendor          : RPM Fusion