How can I reduce the consumption of the `vmmem` process?

Question

I installed docker on windows home which uses WSL2 as a backend. However, since doing this a process called vmmem seems to be consistently consuming a lot of computational resources. I ran docker stop $(docker ps -aq) to kill all running containers (there were 12 - oops) which has improved the issue significantly. However, even after closing docker down vmmem is still taking ~1.5 - 2Gb of ram and ~20% CPU. Since there are no longer any containers running, shouldn't the resource consumption of vmmem be minimal? How can I reduce the consumption of the vmmem process?

score 221 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 02 '21 at 10:37

221

Daniiel B is on the money. To turn off Vmmem simply go into Powershell or whatever terminal you like to use under admin rights and enter the command wsl --shutdown, when your done with playing in wsl1/2.

edited Jun 02 '21 at 10:37

Sadeq Dousti

721

answered Jul 28 '20 at 09:36

smigel

2,338

score 210 · Answer 2 · edited Oct 14 '21 at 07:28

210

I edit the WSL config to limit the memory usage as mentioned here.

# turn off all wsl instances such as docker-desktop
wsl --shutdown
notepad "$env:USERPROFILE/.wslconfig"

Set the values you want for CPU core and Memory:

[wsl2]
memory=3GB   # Limits VM memory in WSL 2 up to 3GB
processors=2 # Makes the WSL 2 VM use two virtual processors

edited Oct 14 '21 at 07:28

Shibumi

103

answered Mar 24 '21 at 00:20

Adonis H.

2,209

Lorenzo · Answer 3 · 2021-11-04T16:21:22.503

vmmem even after docker has shut down, will run for a few seconds up to 1 minute before completely shutting off. So try shutting down your containers and docker and it should disappear soon enough.

The accepted answer talks about shutting down WSL (the windows subsystem for Linux) which makes sense if you actually opened and installed a distro, but since you mentioned about Docker, i'm guessing your vmmem is just showing the usage of docker containers only.

Here's a nice explanation from a trustworthy individual : https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180717-00/?p=99265

Edit:

Considering the main question was about how to reduce the consumption of RAM, and since you're using docker; take a look at : Docker Resource Contraints

More specifically the --memory=2g parameter, you can limit the RAM a container will use, and in turn vmmem itself will use less RAM as well.

score 23 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 18 '21 at 08:23

23

Restart WSL2, by running the following command in PowerShell right click and run in Administrator mode:

Restart-Service LxssManager

answered Mar 18 '21 at 08:23

Michael Kaufman

331

score 17 · Answer 5 · answered Jan 10 '21 at 22:51

17

The memory is being consumed by Linux to cache files. It can be seen in the buff/cache section of free command. To drop the cache, simply run echo 3 | sudo tee /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches.

answered Jan 10 '21 at 22:51

tejasvi

328

score 14 · Answer 6 · answered Nov 16 '22 at 04:04

I just created the %UserProfile%\.wslconfig file with these two lines and left everything else untouched. It worked fine.

[wsl2]
memory=8GB

I did a full shutdown right after adding the file for WSL to pick up the new settings.

$ wsl --shutdown

See additional information from Microsoft here: Advanced settings configuration in WSL

score 10 · Answer 7 · answered May 02 '22 at 16:03

This question was around 2 years old at the time I looked at it and was I was experiencing just now seeing the problems. Might be due to enabling Kubernetes inside Docker for Windows (I'm not sure about that).

I was able to shutdown the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) using the wsl --shutdown command which did free memory but disabled the use of Docker.

So, I updated my ~/.wslconfig file (aka %USERPROFILE%\.wslconfig) as suggested to reduce memory. I believe that helped.

Later found out is my WSL subsystem was out of date and not being updated (by default) with Windows Updates because I had disabled Receive updates for other Microsoft products when you update Windows.

So I enabled that, and ran wsl --update (in admin shell), and my WSL version was updated from 3/16/21 (Kernel Version 5.4.72) to today (5/2/22) (Kernel Version 5.10.102.1).

I'm hoping this will also help.

score 9 · Answer 8 · answered Apr 15 '21 at 14:52

9

If you want to stop vmmem process, try this way

open start menu -> find 'Hyper-V Manager' just by typing
stop the virtual machine -> right-click -> turn off

answered Apr 15 '21 at 14:52

Alexandr Kovalenko

211
2
2

score 4 · Answer 9 · answered Dec 04 '20 at 20:55

In my case I do not have WSL installed but do have Docker. I had shut down the docker process ungracefully then noticed some time later that vmmem was using a lot of CPU. Windows did not allow me to kill the vmmem process.

I had to open Docker again and shut it down gracefully via the system tray icon. After that vmmem was no longer running at all.

score 4 · Answer 10 · answered Jan 16 '22 at 19:22

According to this thread: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/6982, using memory setting in .wslconfig doesn't always work.

Solution seems to be to:

Add this to \Users\<USERPROFILE>\.wslconfig (create the file if it doesn't exist)

[wsl2]
guiApplications=false

Restart wsl by running wsl --shutdown in powershell or command prompt (it says shutdown but it actually stops and restarts all running wsl distributions)

MikeBoolean · Answer 11 · 2022-04-23T12:05:56.103

Could it relate to this????

For my issues, high CPU and high RAM usage by vmmem, I have tried all the solutions I could look up here and elsewhere for WSL2. It seems that for some types of tasks, WSL2 will eat up your memory and not spit it out when done...

Exceptions for using WSL 1 rather than WSL 2:

WSL 2's memory usage grows and shrinks as you use it. When a process frees memory this is automatically returned to Windows. However, as of right now WSL 2 does not yet release cached pages in memory back to Windows until the WSL instance is shut down. If you have long running WSL sessions, or access a very large amount of files, this cache can take up memory on Windows. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/compare-versions

I don't need WSL2 for this specific task... I'm trying WLS1 now...

I'll post an update on how it goes...

Update: Shifting to WSL1, solves it for me when running many subprocesses, it seems. I have been running way past the time point where it overloads the RAM and comes to a halt.

score 1 · Answer 12 · answered Apr 07 '23 at 05:41

1

Aside from WSL, the Android Subsystem could also be the culprit.

answered Apr 07 '23 at 05:41

Lubo Kanev

170

score 0 · Answer 13 · answered Jun 30 '22 at 14:39

0

open cmd as Admin

net stop vmcompute

answered Jun 30 '22 at 14:39

Emmanuel Mavely

1

score 0 · Answer 14 · answered May 05 '23 at 09:57

I had the same issue with Windows 10 Version 20H2 and OS Build 19042.1466 and creating the ".wslconfig" file as the guys told solved my problem. But my concern: is this solution like a memory suppression for the containers and made my container slow? Is there any idea regarding this memory usage? Is it a memory leakage? Or is it only memory reservation that Docker/WSL2 doing? I didn't face this issue in Windows 11 Version 22H2 and OS build 22621.1555 till now at least.

score 0 · Answer 15 · answered May 12 '24 at 01:42

In my case I do not have WSL installed but do have Docker, stop docker from powershell:

  Stop-Process -Name 'Docker Desktop' 
  Stop-Process -Name com.docker.backend

reference to link, it may return no permission to access process, but after 2 minutes vmmem is released from task manager detail.

How can I reduce the consumption of the `vmmem` process?

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