Subject: "memory allocation failed" on a Sun SparcStation ipc

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1993 12:02:51 -0700

On our Sun SparcStation ipc, the MOO keeps crashing with a "memory
allocation failed" error.  But by my count, we should have plenty 
of swap space:

> top
Memory: 32268K available, 29368K in use, 2900K free, 1980K locked
  PID USERNAME PRI NICE   SIZE   RES STATE   TIME   WCPU    CPU COMMAND
 4004 MediaMOO  54    0 18168K 14520K run     3:17 51.24% 51.17% moo
 4019 MediaMOO  26    0   512K  820K run     0:00  0.00%  0.00% top

> pstat -T
124/582 files
 92/322 inodes
 41/138 processes
25388/99376 swap

Why are we crashing?  (I confess I'm not very knowledgeable about system
administration.)  By the way: we are using the built in malloc rather than
gnu-malloc because someone told me there's a bug in gnu-malloc on Suns.

Thanks for your help.

-- Amy

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1993 17:30:12 -0700

Fragmentation, eh?
Could you please explain a bit?
Does this mean there's nothing I can do about it?

If I shell out $$$ for another drive so I can increase my swap space, will
that solve the problem?  If I switch to a decstation with the same amount of
swap space, will that solve the problem?

-- Amy

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From: [email-masked] (Jonathan Bradshaw)
Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1993 16:53:51 -0700

> gnu-malloc because someone told me there's a bug in gnu-malloc on Suns.
It is the same for NeXTs. The problem appears to be fragmentation rather
than allocation of memory.

-- 
 Jonathan Bradshaw | Preferred E-Mail is: [email-masked] | Ham N9OXE
 WNDU-AM/FM/TV South Bend, IN | (219) 631-1616 | Note: Opinions stated are not
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 "If any girl rejects you, don't you doubt it's part of the .plan" - D. Gibson

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From: Pavel Curtis <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1993 18:18:44 -0700

> Date:	Wed, 1 Sep 1993 12:02:51 -0700
> From:	[email-masked]
> 
> ...

> Date:	Wed, 1 Sep 1993 17:30:12 -0700
> From:	[email-masked]
> 
> Fragmentation, eh?

I'd like to see the precise log message for the `out of memory' panic, since
that will show how much memory it was trying to allocate at the time.  Also, it
doesn't help much to see what the swap space situation is when the server is
running fine; we would need to see it at the time of the crash.  You can do
this by running the server under a debugger and putting in a breakpoint on the
routine `panic'; that way, the server will stop in the debugger at the very
moment of panicking and you could see if, in fact, you had a lot of swap space
left.

As for fragmentation, I don't think that's the problem; I've never seen any
such problem on SunOS (which is what LambdaMOO itself runs on), only on NeXT
machines.

	Pavel