Hi all: I have a fairly new linux box set up with opensuse leap 42.1 x64. I have BOINC 7.2.42 installed from the opensuse repositories. Virtual box is version 5.0.10. When I start the client I can watch the memory usage of my system steadily climb until over 98% of the available RAM is used. At that point my swap file starts getting hit hard and my system will slowly become less responsive to the point of no response. If I stop the BOINC client memory usage drops back to about 10%. I can repeat this behavior at will. Suspending ATLAS and VLHC projects alleviates the issue somewhat but memory usage still go to about 55%.

I had my initial memory usage setting fairly aggressive, 75% while in use and 90% while the system was idle. As a test I set both to 25% so that whether or not the system was in use or idle only 25% RAM should get used. But this has no effect on memory usage.

Any ideas how I can get memory usage under control???? Thanks Chris.

My system consist of the following:
AMD FX-8350 CPU
8 GB RAM
500 GB HD
Nvidia Geforce 950 GT video card.
OpeneSuse Leap 42.1 X64 - fully patched

Have you checked what is taking up the memory?
Which process? The BOINC binary, the VirtualBox binary, a project binary? Something else?

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What other projects you run while the memory usage goes to 55%?

How much memory Atlas, vLHC and others claim to need? You need to open client.xml and find sections like the following:

<workunit>
    <name>20fe11ab.6260.18071.10.19.99</name>
    <app_name>setiathome_v7</app_name>
    <version_num>701</version_num>
    <rsc_fpops_est>54553055976086.031250</rsc_fpops_est>
    <rsc_fpops_bound>1091061119521720.625000</rsc_fpops_bound>
    <rsc_memory_bound>33554432.000000</rsc_memory_bound>
    <rsc_disk_bound>33554432.000000</rsc_disk_bound>
    <file_ref>
        <file_name>20fe11ab.6260.18071.10.19.99</file_name>
        <open_name>work_unit.sah</open_name>
    </file_ref>
</workunit>

Are the values in <rsc_memory_bound> anywhere near what you can see in ps/top/other system monitor output?

I will check that out.

Have you checked what is taking up the memory?
Which process? The BOINC binary, the VirtualBox binary, a project binary? Something else?

I have confirmed this is 100% an Atlas issue. Suspending Atlas instantly resolves the issue, re-enabling it causing the issue to promptly return. I wonder if VirtualBox is the culprit.

I will be looking into downgrading VirtualBox to version 4.x, but I know opensuse will complain about it. I have also cross-posted this on the Atlas message board.

How many Atlas tasks BOINC tries to run at the same time?

Any chance you can upgrade BOINC? 7.2 is a bit old.