Bug 109169

Summary: msc.nastran fails to allocate >800MB
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Reporter: Ryan Sweet <rsweet>
Component: kernelAssignee: Arjan van de Ven <arjanv>
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG QA Contact: Brian Brock <bbrock>
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 3.0CC: petrides, riel, rsweet
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: x86_64   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
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Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2003-11-25 16:08:20 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
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Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Attachments:
Description Flags
msc.nastran 2001 logfile showing memory allocation error
none
/proc/<pid>/maps from a nastran job with mem=800MB none

Description Ryan Sweet 2003-11-05 12:42:30 UTC 
Description of problem:

There is a problem with MSC.NASTRAN allocating>800MB of RAM on ia32
systems whihc is described here:
http://www.msclinux.com/support/faq.html?action=view_qanda&selectedfile=28

Presumably, this problem should not occur when running the 32bit
binary under an opteron with >2GB of RAM, however I am experiencing
the issue here on an upgraded taroon system.

I installed the latest kernel errata (2.4.21-4.0.1.ELsmp) as it
appeared to be directly related, however the problem has not changed
after the update.

On the taroon list, Arjan van de Ven asked for the /proc/<pid>/maps
file of the process before it fails, however even from a script I
cannot get the pid fast enough.  Thus I am attaching the maps file
from a run where mem is limited to 800MB.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
2.4.21-4.0.1.ELsmp

How reproducible:
using msc.nastran 2001;
nastran scr=yes mem=896MB

Steps to Reproduce:
1.run nastran with a mem request (or estimate result) >800MB
2. error appears in nastran's .log file
  
Actual results:
see attached files

Expected results:
allocation succeeds and the job runs

Additional info:
Comment 1 Ryan Sweet 2003-11-05 12:45:09 UTC 
Created attachment 95727 [details]
msc.nastran 2001 logfile showing memory allocation error 

also tried with stack size =unlimited but that doesn't seem to matter...
Comment 2 Ryan Sweet 2003-11-05 12:46:56 UTC 
Created attachment 95728 [details]
/proc/<pid>/maps from a nastran job with mem=800MB

since I can't get the maps file from a failing instance (tried scripting it but
can't get the pid fast enough) here is the maps file from a successful
instance, limited to 800MB by using the command line 
nastran mem=800MB
Comment 3 Arjan van de Ven 2003-11-05 12:51:03 UTC 
ok this shows the kernel is just fine, but that msc is broken.
It doesn't use the glibc memory allocator but a broken own allocator,
which doesn't know how to deal with linux well. There's nothing we can
really fix here... MSC needs to fix their allocator to work properly
with linux (eg fall back to mmap of /dev/zero if brk space runs out)
Comment 4 Ryan Sweet 2003-11-05 12:58:08 UTC 
Is there any point in my looking at the 'tumb' patches described in
the MSC FAQ:
http://www.daimi.au.dk/~kasperd/linux_kernel/task_unmapped_base/
Comment 5 Arjan van de Ven 2003-11-05 13:02:17 UTC 
no; that has no relevance on amd64 really....