Flemming Andersen wrote:
I do not know how wide spread this problem is, but I have not been able to install MoscowML due to an unexpected behavior of the malloc version used by Fedora 7 on my new Intel X86_64 machine. The installation of MoscowML appears to fail due to the malloc behavior as described below.I have also found out that mallopt may be a way to control the behavior of malloc, but it is not very well documented in Fedora.So I would like to know if mallopt is officially support and if it will continue to be so. Alternatively, I would like to know if you are able to suggest any other solution to the problem described below.Description of problem with installing MoscowML under Fedora 7 on X86_64 machine:======================================================I learned earlier this week from Prof. Peter Sestoft (ITU DK) who owns MoscowML that in my case the problem is caused by certain versions of malloc(), which during the installation of MoscowML alternatively allocate memory for the camlrunm (underlying runtime system for MoscowML) heap in very high addresses using mmap() or in very low addresses using brk().
This is a feature not a bug, and in any case the allocation doesn't happen "alternatively", but in response to the size of the block being allocated.
Considering that malloc() is probably the most frequently used C library function, called by each of the thousands of programs in Fedora with no apparent problems, it seems rather less likely that this is a bug in glibc, and rather more likely to be a bug or faulty assumption in MoscowML.
> This span appears to require a huge page_table
(14 GB or so), which it would be silly to allocate.
By 'page_table' are you referring to processor page table entries, or some structure within MoscowML?
> I also learned from
Peter that the problem can be avoided by either forcing high memory allocation using this environment variable:export MALLOC_MMAP_THRESHOLD_=0 or by using forcing low memory allocation using this environment variable: export MALLOC_MMAP_MAX_=0However, there may be performance implications of either of these choices. The latter one would limit usable mosml memory to at most 3 GB, I think, whereas the former one has been experimentally tested to allow mosml to use more than 4 GB.Also note that these environment variables affect *all* programs that use malloc() and hence may have mysterious side effects.
OCaml uses malloc for underlying allocations and does not experience any problems under Fedora 7.
Rich. -- Emerging Technologies, Red Hat - http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/ Registered Address: Red Hat UK Ltd, Amberley Place, 107-111 Peascod Street, Windsor, Berkshire, SL4 1TE, United Kingdom. Registered in England and Wales under Company Registration No. 03798903
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