VMWare Workstation Fedora 16 - RAMpage

olygraph · #1 27th March 2012, 01:06 AM

Hi I just install VmWare Workstation 8 on Fedora 16 and I don't know why but it eat all my ram even if I set it to be using only 6Gb out of 12Gb..

It look like it doesn't clear the cache ram by itself. In free -m , when VMWare is on, the cache keep on increasing and the Free Ram decrease and at one point linux start to swap and it gets very slow. I need to shut down vmware and run a command to clear the cache: sync && echo 3 | tee /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches.

I tried a cople of RAM Settings in the vm-pref but cant get aroung it..

Is there a way to keep some free ram on linux and keep on working back n forth with windows and linux????

btw. I installed the VMTools in windows in my vm. do I have to do something on linux side?

THANKSSS!!!

exemple of free-m normal:

HTML Code:

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:         12009       2291       9717          0          1        389
-/+ buffers/cache:       1900      10108
Swap:        11999        673      11326

exemple after vmware set to 6GB:

HTML Code:

            total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:         12009      11840        168          0         48       9039
-/+ buffers/cache:       2752       9256
Swap:        11999        800      11199

-My spec:
Linux Fedora 16 x86_64
VmWare Workstation with Windows 7 Pro x64 installed on it with the VM Tool install

diamond_ramsey · #2 27th March 2012, 04:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by olygraph

Hi I just install VmWare Workstation 8 on Fedora 16 and I don't know why but it eat all my ram even if I set it to be using only 6Gb out of 12Gb...I tried a cople of RAM Settings in the vm-pref but cant get aroung it..

Is there a way to keep some free ram on linux and keep on working back n forth with windows and linux????

btw. I installed the VMTools in windows in my vm. do I have to do something on linux side?
...
exemple of free-m normal:

HTML Code:

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:         12009       2291       9717          0          1        389
-/+ buffers/cache:       1900      10108
Swap:        11999        673      11326

...
exemple after vmware set to 6GB:

HTML Code:

            total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:         12009      11840        168          0         48       9039
-/+ buffers/cache:       2752       9256
Swap:        11999        800      11199

...

What does your free -m look like after you refree your cache?

Could you post a snippet of your top output when running your VM?

Does this happen with a RAM output of 4 GB for your VM?

How long does the memory "hogging" take?

olygraph · #3 27th March 2012, 02:18 PM

Yeahs sure

Now free -m with Vm opened:

HTML Code:

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:         12009      11839        169          0        476       8803
-/+ buffers/cache:       2559       9449
Swap:        11999       1346      10653

Top with vm:

HTML Code:

top - 10:07:11 up 1 day, 16:51,  6 users,  load average: 0.28, 0.19, 0.20
Tasks: 306 total,   2 running, 304 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  2.7%us,  1.2%sy,  0.0%ni, 95.8%id,  0.1%wa,  0.1%hi,  0.1%si,  0.0%st
Mem:  12297340k total, 12134320k used,   163020k free,   489204k buffers
Swap: 12287996k total,  1370844k used, 10917152k free,  9003744k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND                                                              
13618 root      20   0  280m 135m  40m R 27.5  1.1  96:28.25 X                                                                    
13758 olygraph  20   0  828m  66m  17m S 10.9  0.6  11:11.92 kwin                                                                 
 7147 olygraph  20   0 10.2g 5.8g 5.6g S  8.0 49.9 103:01.89 vmware-vmx                                                           
13769 olygraph  20   0 2317m  68m  14m S  7.6  0.6  13:03.05 plasma-desktop                                                       
 5688 olygraph  20   0  671m  96m  16m S  3.0  0.8  20:12.32 chrome                                                               
13901 olygraph  20   0  707m 7700 4088 S  3.0  0.1  56:33.45 xmms                                                                 
 6062 olygraph  20   0  537m  20m  12m S  2.3  0.2   0:03.73 konsole                                                              
13810 olygraph   9 -11  511m 8648 7748 S  2.3  0.1  23:30.23 pulseaudio                                                           
 5542 olygraph  20   0  858m  84m  20m S  2.0  0.7   5:03.74 chrome                                                               
 6917 olygraph  20   0  967m  61m  23m S  1.3  0.5   0:55.60 chrome                                                               
 4818 olygraph  20   0  642m  40m  10m S  0.7  0.3   2:10.31 vmware                                                               
13975 olygraph  20   0  587m  11m 6840 S  0.7  0.1   1:56.61 vmware-tray                                                          
   31 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.3  0.0   0:07.39 ksoftirqd/6                                                          
 1917 olygraph  20   0 14052 1216  984 S  0.3  0.0   0:48.03 gam_server                                                           
 5098 olygraph  20   0  441m  12m 5276 S  0.3  0.1   0:21.93 vmware-unity-he                                                      
 5474 olygraph  20   0  630m  29m  11m S  0.3  0.2   0:16.44 dolphin                                                              
 6337 olygraph  20   0  969m  69m  18m S  0.3  0.6   5:46.75 chrome                                                               
 6681 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.3  0.0   0:04.47 kworker/13:3                                                         
 7376 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.3  0.0   0:06.34 kworker/4:1                                                          
13267 olygraph  20   0 15396 1380  920 R  0.3  0.0   0:00.13 top

I did an alias for clearing my cash command here is the output of free -m after closing the vm and running the command.

HTML Code:

# clearCache
Password: 
3
# free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:         12009       2226       9782          0          2        122
-/+ buffers/cache:       2100       9908
Swap:        11999       1338      10661

No lag anymore in fedora

after clearing the ram

Vm does that no matter how many ram you give it. When it is running the cached number is always going up and never get clean by itself. The vm work fine when you are inside windows but as soon you go in linux everything is lagguy.

Thank you for you care!!

T3STY · #4 27th March 2012, 09:12 PM

This looks quite like a VMware bug. I'm also experiencing issues with VMWare player which will use as much RAM as possible and then, when no more free RAM is available, VMWare player hangs (with no way to get it back).