On Sat, 6 Apr 2019 12:27:01 -0400 Tom Horsley horsley1953@gmail.com wrote:
Here's a weird one I just noticed: I've been using a Windows 10 virtual machine to run my tax software. I've got it displayed in virt-viewer and all is well, then I close the virt-viewer window and leave the KVM running. About 5 minutes later I see a cpu suddenly pegged at 100%. I run top and see that qemu is the culprit. I start virt-viewer again, and it goes back to normal.
Anyone else seen this? Why would nobody looking at it make it go crazy I wonder?
In addition to all the serious possibilities that everyone else already mentioned, you may also want to take a look at the trivial reasons --- maybe the Windows screensaver is configured to activate after 5 min of user inactivity, and starts draining the CPU by drawing 3D intensive stuff on the virtual display (you know --- pipes, swimming fish, whatever). Naturally, it turns itself off as soon as it detects keyboard/mouse activity, i.e. when you start the virt-viewer again, and you never even know it was there.
So you may want to take a look at all the screenlocking, screensaving, power saving, etc... settings in Windows, and make sure all that stuff (that doesn't make sense in a virtual machine environment), is turned off and deactivated.
Just a thought. ;-)
Best, :-) Marko