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I'd just like to add that I also have a big problem with a Ubuntu 9.10 64bit host and slow VMs (all 32bit XP SP3). The system monitor applet shows one CPU maxxing out when I am active in the VM, even just moving the mouse.
It does, however, go away or is much reduced at least on the VMs I've tried so far when I drop back to 1 CPU. I am running a dual-core laptop (Dell M6300) and I was running VMs with 2 CPUs flawlessly in 8.04 32bit host. The workloads in the 32bit XP SP3 VMs operate somewhat better with 2 CPUs, so I'd like to get back to that as soon as possible.
I filed a support request before noticing 9.10 was in the unsupported list. That's fine for a short while, if slightly annoying... however I'd strongly (but hopefully politely) request that you make every effort to meet Ubuntu 10.04 LTS when it hits the street. Long-term-support releases are much more important than these other ones. I was just personally getting too far behind at 8.04 LTS. A LTS release probably will be a relatively minor set of changes for stability, so you probably won't have a problem anyway.
If you'd like me to try anything I'd be happy to help.
Darron
I have tested this on two computers and one exhibits high utilization and the other does not. Although the one that does have the high cpu utilization does settle down to normal levels after a few minutes. Here is a brief summary of the Good and the Bad:
Good Guy:
AMD Opteron 165 (dual core) cpu 1.8GHz OC'd to 2.48GHz
ASUS A8N-SLI mobo
3GB RAM
nVidia 7950 GPU
openSUSE 11.2 (upgraded from 11.1)
- KDE 4.3.3
- ReiserFS
- two Seagate 320GB hdd in a software raid 0 array
- kernel-desktop
Bad Guy:
Lenovo T61 Laptop
Intel Core2 Duo CPU 2.2GHz
3GB RAM
nVidia 140M workstation-class video card
openSUSE 11.2 (clean install)
- KDE 4.3.1
- ext4 mounted with noatime,nodiratime,barrier=0,data=writeback, also readahead is set to 4096KB
- 120GB hdd
- kernel-desktop
The guest vm's on both systems are the same (identical copies) : Windows XP sp3. The vm hardware is the same : 1GB RAM, 1 vCPU. Seeing that some are reporting issues with the # of vCPU's I tested on the GoodGuy with 2 vCPU's to see if I could make it behave badly. I it did not get worse, it did not get better either which is fine.
So I'll need to do some further testing to see if I can make the GoodGuy bad or the BadGuy good. Towards that end I am going to format a spare hdd in my GoodGuy system with the ext4 filesystem to see if it possible that ext4 is causing an issue. Also I will reinstall openSUSE on the laptop with ext3. This should help, depending on the outcomes, to narrow the problem down to either the filesystem (ext4) or the brand of cpu (amd good, intel bad). Both of my cpu's have the virtiualization support and it is enabled as well.
Another test - should anyone else care to test it - is in regards to the kernel. There are some that are indicating it may be an issue with the kernel and the scheduler. It occurs to me that it may also be the timer as the kernel-desktop that is available with openSUSE changes the timer from 250Hz (used in openSUSE 11.1 and prior) to 1000Hz. The purpose of the change (option really) is to provide a more responsive single-user desktop experience vs the prior setting. Fortunately openSUSE also ships with the server oriented kernel (250Hz) so it is easy to test this hypothesis. I have no idea if other distro's are doing the same thing....
I'll let you how it goes.
Cheers,
Ron
Good Guy:
AMD Opteron 165 (dual core) cpu 1.8GHz OC'd to 2.48GHz
ASUS A8N-SLI mobo
3GB RAM
nVidia 7950 GPU
openSUSE 11.2 (upgraded from 11.1)
- KDE 4.3.3
- ReiserFS
- two Seagate 320GB hdd in a software raid 0 array
- kernel-desktop
Bad Guy:
Lenovo T61 Laptop
Intel Core2 Duo CPU 2.2GHz
3GB RAM
nVidia 140M workstation-class video card
openSUSE 11.2 (clean install)
- KDE 4.3.1
- ext4 mounted with noatime,nodiratime,barrier=0,data=writeback, also readahead is set to 4096KB
- 120GB hdd
- kernel-desktop
The guest vm's on both systems are the same (identical copies) : Windows XP sp3. The vm hardware is the same : 1GB RAM, 1 vCPU. Seeing that some are reporting issues with the # of vCPU's I tested on the GoodGuy with 2 vCPU's to see if I could make it behave badly. I it did not get worse, it did not get better either which is fine.
So I'll need to do some further testing to see if I can make the GoodGuy bad or the BadGuy good
. Towards that end I am going to format a spare hdd in my GoodGuy system with the ext4 filesystem to see if it possible that ext4 is causing an issue. Also I will reinstall openSUSE on the laptop with ext3. This should help, depending on the outcomes, to narrow the problem down to either the filesystem (ext4) or the brand of cpu (amd good, intel bad). Both of my cpu's have the virtiualization support and it is enabled as well.Another test - should anyone else care to test it - is in regards to the kernel. There are some that are indicating it may be an issue with the kernel and the scheduler. It occurs to me that it may also be the timer as the kernel-desktop that is available with openSUSE changes the timer from 250Hz (used in openSUSE 11.1 and prior) to 1000Hz. The purpose of the change (option really) is to provide a more responsive single-user desktop experience vs the prior setting. Fortunately openSUSE also ships with the server oriented kernel (250Hz) so it is easy to test this hypothesis. I have no idea if other distro's are doing the same thing....
I'll let you how it goes.
Cheers,
Ron
