[Vm-dev] VM crash with message 'could not grow remembered set'

Eliot Miranda eliot.miranda at gmail.com
Mon Oct 23 17:33:58 UTC 2017


Hi Ryan,

On Sat, Oct 14, 2017 at 11:35 PM, Ryan Macnak <rmacnak at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> Why is filling the remembered set fatal? It's possible to empty the
> remembered set by promoting everything in new space.
>

It should not be fatal unless here is no space to grow the remembered set.
Assuming we don't want to recover from an overflowed remembered set by
scanning all pointer objects in old space at the next scavenge the
remembered set must always remain valid; all old space objects with a new
space reference must be in the remembered set, and hence the remembered set
must grow on demand.

I don't know what's happening here but indeed it looks like no old space
heap space is available to grow the remembered set.  It could be because
old space is full or because tree remembered set is very large.  Don't know
which yet.  But on remembered set management, the scavenger "does run" (is
intended to run) in a mode designed to reduce the remembered set size if
the remembered set is more than 3/4 full.

I think I may have some poor code in setting the tide limit for this 3/4
full mark.  Further, the algorithm to shrink the remembered set, which uses
reference counting to find the set of new space objects to tenure that will
most profitably reduce the remembered set size, may be buggy.


> On Oct 9, 2017 10:12 PM, "Clément Bera" <bera.clement at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Hi,
>
> This is another limit than the out of memory error. Too many references
> from old objects to young objects. The limit cannot be changed directly
> from the image. However, if using Spur, you can try to change the young
> space size, which also changes the remembered table size and might fix your
> problem. To do so you can do:
> Smalltalk vm parameterAt: 45 put: (Smalltalk vm parameterAt: 44) * 4. And
> then *restart the image.*
> Check here
> <https://clementbera.wordpress.com/2017/03/12/tuning-the-pharo-garbage-collector/> section
> TUNING NEW SPACE SIZE for more info about that.
>
> If you are using Spur, could you send us the image (if it is 500Mb could
> you put it to download on dropbox or something like that ?) ? That way we
> can reproduce and see what is possible. Normally in Spur if the remembered
> table grows too big a tenure to shrink the remembered table happens, so
> that error should not happen. Eliot is currently moving to another place,
> so he might be busy. If he is available to answer, I guess he will have a
> look, if he is not, I can have a look today or thursday. However I am not
> interested in fixing pre-Spur VMs.
>
> Regards,
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 9, 2017 at 11:57 PM, Phil B <pbpublist at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> Is this effectively an out of memory error or am I hitting some other
>> internal VM limit?  (I.e. can the limit be increased or is  it a hard
>> limit?) I'm running into this when using the reference finder tool in a
>> Cuis image.  (It's a moderately large image at ~500 meg)
>>
>>
>
>
>
>


-- 
_,,,^..^,,,_
best, Eliot
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/vm-dev/attachments/20171023/2606b521/attachment.html>


More information about the Vm-dev mailing list