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theslim1
Contributor
Contributor
‎09-11-2023 11:59 PM

Memory Leak on VMware ESXi, 8.0.1, 21495797 when using iGPU Passthrough on i7-11700B

Hello - I've spent a few weeks troubleshooting an issue with memory usage rising on Linux VM's (Ubuntu 22.04 + 2004) without any clear indication why (No user-space applications, looks like a memory leak) when passing through through an iGPU (Intel UHD 750). I have full details in the post below so I won't repost all my findings here:

https://github.com/k3s-io/k3s/discussions/8315

I'm able to reproduce this issue on any VM created that I enable pass-through of the integrated iGPU (Intel UHD 750) on the i7-11700B CPU. The hardware platform itself is a NUC11BTMi7  (Intel NUC 11 Extreme).

After much troubleshooting, i discovered that setting `svga.present= false` solves the issue (But disables the console as expected). This seems like a clear bug, so I'd like to know if this is known, how to report it, and also would like to share this knowledge so other community members can benefit from it.

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5 Replies
lamw
Community Manager
Community Manager
‎09-12-2023 07:46 AM

Thanks for sharing and reporting this. 

I'm not sure if you're same individual (Nick) who shared this reference on my blog. I'm curious, if you've attempted to try a newer version of Ubuntu (23.04) and whether you're still seeing the same behavior? Just trying to rule out older versions as I see mention of 20.04 being used. Also, what version of ESXi are you observing this with and have you tried the latest version to rule out any potential fixes?

In addition, when this occurs. Can you also provide a vm-support from ESXi host, which would help us

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theslim1
Contributor
Contributor
‎09-12-2023 04:42 PM

I am indeed the same person! To answer your questions,


I've tested Ubuntu versions 20.04 and 22.04 and notice the behavior in both so far. Haven't tried 23.04. I'm running VMware ESXi, 8.0.1, 21495797. I believe I'm on the latest ESXI available right now. Here is the support bundle for review.

I will note for reproducing the issue, The best way to catch the issue is to use `smem` to watch the "dynamic memory usage (non-cache)" rising, as well as watching the unreclaimable slab memory usage rise -- "cat /proc/meminfo | grep "SUnreclaim"". You will also see "Available Memory" drop over time.

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theslim1
Contributor
Contributor
‎09-12-2023 04:46 PM

I'll also note I got the solution from here, Which has a few other people with the same issue.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/kwyhr0/comment/jcyjj11/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&c...

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lamw
Community Manager
Community Manager
‎09-12-2023 09:28 PM

Can you also provide the VMX file for the VM? 

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