Fwd: [Vm-dev] VM stability issue on unix

Adrian Lienhard adi at netstyle.ch
Tue Sep 5 10:06:30 UTC 2006


I've recently brought up the following issue on the VM mailing list,  
but got no reply so far for whatever reason...

In short, the problem is that the unix VM blocks after the memory  
consumption exceeds about 120MB. I think its a critical bug, likely  
affecting many Seaside users who deploy on unix systems.

I've filed the following Mantis report: http://bugs.impara.de/ 
view.php?id=4709

Adrian


Begin forwarded message:

> From: Adrian Lienhard <adi at netstyle.ch>
> Date: August 31, 2006 8:23:20 AM GMT+02:00
> To: vm-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
> Subject: [Vm-dev] VM stability issue on unix
> Reply-To: Squeak Virtual Machine Development Discussion <vm- 
> dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
>
> Hi VM maintainers,
>
> We have run into the following problem with 3.7/3.9 unix VMs (but  
> not with version 3.6). The VM hoggs the CPU and does not respond  
> anymore after consuming more than about 120MB of memory. The  
> problem is reproducible independently of the image version (simply  
> by instantiating enough objects).
>
> This is the VM version we are using:
>
> 3.7-7 #1 Don Okt 20 11:25:27 CEST 2005 gcc-Version (Debian  
> Squeak3.7 of '4 September 2004' [latest update: #5989] Linux 2.6.10  
> #1 Tue Dec 28 21:16:21 CET 2004 i686 GNU/Linux
>
> Inspecting the Squeak process stacks with gdb does not show  
> anything unusual, however, one process does not seem to get back  
> from calling t	he new: primitive.
>
> The call stack of the VM looks like this:
>
> #0  updatePointersInRangeFromto (memStart=231866373,  
> memEnd=2138759076)
>     at gnu-interp.c:21562
> #1  0x0805d500 in incCompBody () at gnu-interp.c:4650
> #2  0x0805d2ed in fullGC () at gnu-interp.c:4500
> #3  0x0806d576 in sufficientSpaceAfterGC (minFree=202536) at gnu- 
> interp.c:21275
> #4  0x08067d5e in primitiveNewWithArg () at gnu-interp.c:16045
> #5  0x080614fa in interpret () at gnu-interp.c:7249
> #6  0x0805a5fb in main (argc=0, argv=0xbfeff8a4, envp=0x0)
>     at /usr/src/Squeak-3.7-7/platforms/unix/vm/sqUnixMain.c:1367
>
> It looks like the same issue has been discussed in the following  
> thread already: http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/seaside/ 
> 2005-October/005897.html.
> The proposed workaround of explicitly setting -memory with a high  
> enough value works, i.e., the vm does not stop working when the  
> memory consumption exceeds 120MB.
>
> Since in Seaside applications images often grow up to 200MB or even  
> more, this is a real show stopper...
>
> Cheers,
> Adrian




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