Public bug reported:

When running VirtualBox, the system load suddenly raises without
stopping. When I kill compiz (which includes Unity), the load goes down
again. If I don't kill it quick enough, the system locks up completely
and I need to power off the machine.

I was searching very long for a solution because I thought it's a
VirtualBox problem. I'm using the Oracle 4.2.12 package provided on
http://www.virtualbox.org/, but I also tried using the stock Ubuntu
package and even with an older VirtualBox version (4.1), but the problem
still occured.

Before I had this problem, I was using Ubuntu 12.10 without any issues.
When 13.04 came out, I decided to make a fresh installation and have
this problem since then.

Description of the problem:
- I'm running Ubuntu 13.04 on an Asus Zenbook UX31A with 4 GB memory and 128 GB 
SSD.
- Before I start VirtualBox, I have already opened several programs: Chromium, 
Firefox, Skype are the biggest in terms of memory usage (I think the problem 
occured less often when VirtualBox was running alone, so maybe it's related to 
memory usage)
- When I start VirtualBox, the problem occurs sometimes during boot, but 
sometimes only after a a few minutes of uptime. Most of the time, it happened 
when the machine was idle and I was working in a different window.

Workarounds:
1) I can use Unity only when I run a background job which checks for the load 
and kills / replaces compiz & unity if the system load is too high.
2) I decided to install ubuntu-gnome-desktop and switch to GNOME for the time 
being. It uses compiz as well but without Unity, and the problem is completely 
gone! (That's why I'm pretty sure it must be a Unity issue...)

** Affects: unity (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1180548

Title:
  High load when running VirtualBox

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