-------- Forwarded Message --------
From: Heitzso <heitzso@growthmodels.com>
To: Julian Coleman <jdc@coris.org.uk>
Subject: Re: compiling php5 out of memory problem
Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2006 10:43:47 -0400

> > I'm having trouble with the lang/php5 make on a dual cpu sparc20 w/ 512M
> > of RAM and 1G of swap.  The make crashes out with a memory allocation
> > error while trying to allocate a single 64M block on top of earlier 2M
> > worth of allocations.
> 
> > Turns out I was running current from last Feb or so and already had that
> > NKMEMPAGES line in my kernel.  I'm upgrading /usr/src current and will
> > recompile to see if a current kernel GENERIC.MP can handle the PHP5
> > update without choking on the 64M memory allocation.
> 
> Reading your original message and the replies, it's not clear to me if the
> problem is that the compile stops or if the machine crashes.  Assuming that
> the make stops and the machine is fine, have you tried increasing the data
> size limit passed to the make process?  I needed to do this to get some
> pkgsrc programs to compile with gcc4.  If you are using sh or ksh:
> 
>   ulimit -d # show current data size limit
>   ulimit -dH # show maximum data size limit (hard limit)
>   ulimit -d `ulimit -dH`; make # run make with maximum data size limit
> 
> Hope this helps,

Ah ... the wonders of the simple ulimit!  That was all that was needed.
The default data size limit was 64M, so the gcc memory allocation
request of 64M on top of the prior 2M broke and gcc halted.  The hard
limit was 512M or something on that order.  So bumping up the current to
the hard limit was all that was necessary.

I had read a paper off the Internet that discussed this, but no where
did it say that a program's memory allocation came from the data memory
(versus the dozen or so other types of memory).  I was creeping up on
experimenting with that, but thought I would recompile a current kernel
to insure that I was working with a latest-greatest kernel.

I don't know if anyone wants to mess with this, but adding this
explanation to the doc re pkgsrc would be useful. Something along the
lines of ...
"
If a package make stops with an error message stating that a memory
allocation failed, then you should try rerunning the make after
increasing the current virtual memory data size to the maximum data
limit size (also known as the hard limit) using the command sequence:
ulimit -d # show current data size limit
ulimit -dH # show maximum data size limit (hard limit)
ulimit -d `ulimit -dH`; make # run make with maximum data size limit
"


Thank you very much!

Heitzso