Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 13:45:58 -0700 From: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> To: Barney Wolff <barney@databus.com>, Doug White <dwhite@gumbysoft.com> Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: malloc does not return null when out of memory Message-ID: <200307281345.58831.wes@softweyr.com> In-Reply-To: <20030723221336.GA26555@pit.databus.com> References: <20030723173427.GA72876@vmunix.com> <20030723140329.C92624@carver.gumbysoft.com> <20030723221336.GA26555@pit.databus.com>
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On Wednesday 23 July 2003 15:13, Barney Wolff wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 02:09:00PM -0700, Doug White wrote:
> > On Wed, 23 Jul 2003, Gabor wrote:
> > > We have a little soekris box running freebsd that uses racoon for
> > > key management. It's used for setting up an ipsec tunnel. I
> > > noticed that one of these devices lost the tunnel this morning.
> > > I looked in the log and saw this
> > >
> > > Jul 23 01:37:57 m0n0wall /kernel: pid 80 (racoon), uid 0, was
> > > killed: out of swap space
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > > Here is the tail end of the output. It dies when trying to poke
> > > at the memory using memset. If I just malloc without the memset,
> > > it never even dies.
> >
> > That's normal. If you malloc() memory and never touch it then it is
> > never actually allocated.
> >
> > Your problem is that you're running out of memory. Try killing off
> > unneeded daemons and set maxusers to a low value (like 32). Also
> > try reducing the size of your mfs partitions, if you're using
> > rc.diskless2. I don't think raccoon is much of a memory pig, unless
> > you have a huge number of connections.
>
> Shouldn't malloc return 0 when out of memory rather than returning
> an address that won't work? I believe that was the complaint.
> Presumably having NO_SWAPPING has something to do with it, but
> filling the swap might well do the same thing.
Define "out of memory". FreeBSD employs swap overcommit; the memory
pages aren't allocated until they are actually touched. This is such a
Frequently Asked Question it's really a Constantly Asked Question and
*any* search of the archives would've turned up dozens of conversations
on this exact same topic.
In other words, let's not carry this on any further.
--
"Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"
Wes Peters wes@softweyr.com
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