Each time I fire up my guest OS in virtualbox 3.0.10 (non OSE) VBoxSDL --startvm "Windows XP" I get the following kernel "warning?" message almost immediately ACPI: EC: GPE storm detected, transactions will use polling mode which makes the guest OS quite sluggish. (I would say that the kernel message affects only the guest OS) Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. install virtualbox-bin 2. install Windows XP 3. start the virtual machine 4. check /var/log/messages [root@carbon ~]# emerge --info Portage 2.1.6.13 (default/linux/x86/10.0, gcc-4.3.4, glibc-2.9_p20081201-r2, 2.6.30-gentoo-r8 i686) ================================================================= System uname: Linux-2.6.30-gentoo-r8-i686-Intel-R-_Core-TM-2_CPU_T7600_@_2.33GHz-with-gentoo-1.12.13 Timestamp of tree: Sun, 15 Nov 2009 13:00:02 +0000 app-shells/bash: 4.0_p28 dev-java/java-config: 2.1.9-r1 dev-lang/python: 2.6.2-r1 dev-util/cmake: 2.6.4-r3 sys-apps/baselayout: 1.12.13 sys-apps/sandbox: 1.6-r2 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.63-r1 sys-devel/automake: 1.9.6-r2, 1.10.2 sys-devel/binutils: 2.18-r3 sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.4.1 sys-devel/libtool: 2.2.6a virtual/os-headers: 2.6.27-r2 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-O2 -march=core2 -pipe" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/env.d /etc/env.d/java/ /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/sandbox.d /etc/terminfo /etc/udev/rules.d" CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=core2 -pipe" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="distlocks fixpackages parallel-fetch protect-owned sandbox sfperms strict unmerge-orphans userfetch" FFLAGS="-O2 -march=core2 -pipe" GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://mirror.switch.ch/mirror/gentoo/" LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1" LINGUAS="en" MAKEOPTS="-j3" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT="/" PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="X a52 aac aalib acl acpi alsa amr amrnb amrr apache2 audacious autoipd avahi bash-completion bcmath berkdb bluetooth bzip2 cairo cdb cdda cddb cdparanoia cdr cleartype cli consolekit cracklib crypt css cups dbus dga dirac directfb djvu dri dts dvd dvdnav dvdr encode exif fbcon ffmpeg fftw firefox flac fontconfig fortran ftp gdbm gimp glitz glut gnome gnome-keyring gnuplot gpm gtk gzip hal iconv ieee1394 imagemagick ipv6 irda jack java java6 javascript jpeg jpeg2k lame latex ldap libcaca libgda libnotify lirc lm_sensors lzo mad matroska mdnsresponder-compat mng modules mozilla mp3 mp4 mpeg mplayer mudflap ncurses networkmanager nls nptl nptlonly nsplugin offensive ogg openal openexr opengl openmp pam pcre pdf perl plotutils png pppd python qt3 qt4 rdesktop readline reflection ruby samba session smp sox spell spl sse2 sse3 ssl ssse3 sysfs tcl tcpd theora threads thunderbird tiff tk truetype unicode usb v4l v4l2 vcd vim-syntax vnc vorbis wavpack wifi win32codecs wxwidgets x264 x86 xcomposite xorg xpm xprint xscreensaver xv xvid zlib" ALSA_CARDS="hda-intel" ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS="adpcm alaw asym copy dmix dshare dsnoop empty extplug file hooks iec958 ioplug ladspa lfloat linear meter mmap_emul mulaw multi null plug rate route share shm softvol" APACHE2_MODULES="actions alias auth_basic authn_alias authn_anon authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache dav dav_fs dav_lock deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias" ELIBC="glibc" INPUT_DEVICES="evdev keyboard mouse synaptics" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" LINGUAS="en" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="radeon radeonhd vesa fbdev" Unset: CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, INSTALL_MASK, LANG, LC_ALL, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS, PORTDIR_OVERLAY
(In reply to comment #0) [..] I'm unable to reproduce this, currently tested on several hosts (app-emulation/virtualbox-bin-3.0.10 and various kernels, both amd64 and x86), i spotted a similar bug on virtualbox's bugtracker[1] (they claim is resolved). Can you test the same guest with the: "Enable IO APIC" option off "Enable IO ACPI" option on [note that often this settings are only honored/applied when selected before the guest installation] This problem occurs with app-emulation/virtualbox-bin-3.0.8 too? Atm i can't say if the problem is on your host acpi support/DSDT table or upstream (VirtualBox) [1] http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/4910
(In reply to comment #1) [..] First of all I have this virtualbox problem only on my macbookpro late 2006. Second, I have the same problem with two very different OS i.e. gentoo and debian 5 (lenny)... the issue is exactly the same, sluggish OS inside virtualbox right after that warning kernel message appears. The only difference with debian is that there the message appears after ~2 hours while with gentoo it appears almost immediately when I fire up virtualbox or after few hours if I don't fire it up.
In my case, it happens while having system too busy. Compiling gcc + listening to music (amarok) with a huge collection, and surfing the internet. After this happens, music starts to have noises from time to time, and skipping frames.
Please reopen in case it still happens with latest virtualbox versions.
