I have configured my Ubuntu VirtualBox install to have a base memory setting of 512MB. When running this install, its fairly sluggish in a way that feels like its thrashing memory. In other words, it will be fine for a little while and then suddenly run like a pig for a minute or two. This happens when running a couple of terminals, Eclipse w/ a PyDev Django project, and Firefox, or really any combination of a few applications.
When I look in Windows task manager, the VirtualBox.exe that corresponds to this Ubuntu machine is hovering at about 100MB-120MB.
When I look at System Monitor within Ubuntu, I see that it says for Memory "329.3 Mib (66.3%) of 496.6 MiB" and for Swap "138.6 MiB (38.0%) of 365.0 MiB".
So my first question is, which of these numbers do I believe? (And why the difference?)
My second question is, how can I convince Ubuntu to use the memory I've given it, assuming it will improve performance.
42 Answers
VirtualBox.exe shows only ~100MB because it's either swapping to disk in windows (nasty and bad) or because it's forked the service off to some other process that you can't find.
The correct tool to see Ubuntu's memory usage is the System Monitor. In your case, it says it is using 329 out of 497 MiB of RAM (this means roughly 345 out of 521 MB). This should be all ram to be honest, considering PAE and how visualisation works.
This looks to be a Windows kernel problem. View the third post here:
So, the memory you allocated for the VM is being used, but it isn't being properly represented by Task Manager. The VMMap tool they show in that thread will give a better representation of memory usage.
