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Date:      Wed, 30 Nov 2011 18:44:21 +0100
From:      Andreas Tobler <andreast-list@fgznet.ch>
To:        Kostik Belousov <kostikbel@gmail.com>
Cc:        FreeBSD Arch <freebsd-arch@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: powerpc64 malloc limit?
Message-ID:  <4ED66B75.3060409@fgznet.ch>
In-Reply-To: <20111130170936.GB50300@deviant.kiev.zoral.com.ua>
References:  <4ED5BE19.70805@fgznet.ch> <20111130162236.GA50300@deviant.kiev.zoral.com.ua> <4ED65F70.7050700@fgznet.ch> <20111130170936.GB50300@deviant.kiev.zoral.com.ua>

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On 30.11.11 18:09, Kostik Belousov wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 05:53:04PM +0100, Andreas Tobler wrote:
>> On 30.11.11 17:22, Kostik Belousov wrote:
>>> On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 06:24:41AM +0100, Andreas Tobler wrote:
>>>> All,
>>>>
>>>> while working on gcc I found a very strange situation which renders my
>>>> powerpc64 machine unusable.
>>>> The test case below tries to allocate that much memory as 'wanted'. The
>>>> same test case on amd64 returns w/o trying to allocate mem because the
>>>> size is far to big.
>>>>
>>>> I couldn't find the reason so far, that's why I'm here.
>>>>
>>>> As Nathan pointed out the VM_MAXUSER_SIZE is the biggest on powerpc64:
>>>> #define VM_MAXUSER_ADDRESS      (0x7ffffffffffff000UL)
>>>>
>>>> So, I'd expect a system to return an allocation error when a user tries
>>>> to allocate too much memory and not really trying it and going to be
>>>> unusable. Iow, I'd exepect the situation on powerpc64 as I see on amd64.
>>>>
>>>> Can anybody explain me the situation, why do I not have a working limit
>>>> on powerpc64?
>>>>
>>>> The machine itself has 7GB RAM and 12GB swap. The amd64 where I compared
>>>> has around 4GB/4GB RAM/swap.
>>>>
>>>> TIA,
>>>> Andreas
>>>>
>>>> include<stdlib.h>
>>>> #include<stdio.h>
>>>>
>>>> int main()
>>>> {
>>>>           void *p;
>>>>
>>>>           p = (void*) malloc (1152921504606846968ULL);
>>>>           if (p != NULL)
>>>>                   printf("p = %p\n", p);
>>>>
>>>>           printf("p = %p\n", p);
>>>>           return (0);
>>>> }
>>>
>>> First, you should provide details of what consistutes 'the unusable
>>> machine situation' on powerpc.
>>
>> I can not login anymore, everything is stuck except the core control
>> mechanisms for example the fan controller.
>>
>> Top reports 'ugly' figures, below from a earlier try:
>>
>> last pid:  6790;  load averages:  0.78,  0.84,  0.86    up 0+00:34:52
>> 22:42:29 47 processes:  1 running, 46 sleeping
>> CPU:  0.0% user,  0.0% nice, 15.4% system, 11.8% interrupt, 72.8% idle
>> Mem: 5912M Active, 570M Inact, 280M Wired, 26M Cache, 104M Buf, 352K Free
>> Swap: 12G Total, 9904M Used, 2383M Free, 80% Inuse, 178M Out
>>
>>     PID USERNAME    THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE   C   TIME   WCPU
>> COMMAND
>>    6768 andreast      1  52    01073741824G  6479M pfault  1   0:58
>> 18.90% 31370.
>>
>> And after my mem and swap are full I see swap_pager_getswapspace(16) failed.
>>
>> In this state I can only power-cycle the machine.
>>
>>> That said, on amd64 the user map is between 0 and 0x7fffffffffff, which
>>> obviously less then the requested allocation size 0x100000000000000.
>>> If you look at the kdump output on amd64, you will see that malloc()
>>> tries to mmap() the area, fails and retries with obreak(). Default
>>> virtual memory limit is unlimited, so my best quess is that on amd64
>>> vm_map_findspace() returns immediately.
>>>
>>> On powerpc64, I see no reason why vm_map_entry cannot be allocated, but
>>> please note that vm object and pages shall be only allocated on demand.
>>> So I am curious how does your machine breaks and where.
>>
>> I would expect that the 'system' does not allow me to allocate that much
>> of ram.
>
> Does the issue with machine going into limbo reproducable with the code
> you posted ?

If I understand you correctly, yes. I can launch the test case and the 
machine is immediately unusable. Means I can not kill the process nor 
can I log in. Also, top does not show anything useful.

The original test case where I discovered this behavior behaves a bit 
different.
http://gcc.gnu.org/viewcvs/trunk/libstdc%2B%2B-v3/testsuite/23_containers/vector/bool/modifiers/insert/31370.cc?revision=169421&view=markup

Here I can follow how the ram and swap is eaten up. Top is reporting the 
figures. If everything is 'full', the swaper errors start to appear on 
the console.

> Or, do you need to actually touch the pages in the allocated region ?

If I have to, how would I do that?

> If the later (and I do expect that), then how many pages do you need
> to touch before machine breaks ? Is it single access that causes the
> havoc, or you need to touch the amount approximately equal to RAM+swap ?

Andreas



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