For some reason, some of my files have a last modified date in the future. In addition to this, file operations in PHP are SUPER slow. For example, rebuilding the Symfony2 cache can take over 40 seconds (its takes 1-2 on my MacBook Pro).

Notice the time for ListingsCRUDController.php. It just says "2012". In order see the date more clearly I ran ls --time-style="full-iso" -l

For some reason it shows that this file's last modified date is ~5 hours into the future.

System time:

To make things more confusing, the system will intermittently speed up. Suddenly, my app will start serving requests in 1-2 seconds (down from 40 seconds) for no apparent reason. I mean I don't do anything to my code/system config - it just changes.

Also, during a slow PHP request, the php5-fpm process (nginx) uses 100% of the CPU for the duration of the request.

This is the second VM this has happened on and I need to know why its doing this. It has become unusable.

Information About My Setup

VirtualBox 4.2.0

Host: Macbook Pro

Guest: Ubuntu Server 12.04

Package dkms is installed

Timezones match for Ubuntu and PHP.

Things I've Tried

Both Apache and Nginx.

APC enabled and disabled.

Xdebug enabled and disabled.

1 processor up to 4 processors.

1gb memory up to 4gb memory.

I've installed Ubuntu using the regular kernel and the VM kernel.