Command line arguments - Memory problems

[jp.]

Hi.
We were using the folowing memory parameters:
-mo300000000 -mi16000000 -ml16000000 -mn4000000 -mf80000000
But now, we have changed to:
-mo700000000 -mi100000000 -ml16000000 -mn4000000 -mf40000000

We have a problem with -mi100000000 (if we change it to 16000000, we wont get the error).
We are getting this error:
'Primitive failed in: Behavior>>#new: due to Not enough memory'

Some memory information in the moment of the error:

Smalltalk memory:
Total allocation: -797477648
Available: 266468
Fixed Space: 39748916
New Space: 46940
Old Space: 219408
SO memory:
dwMemoryLoad: 85
dwTotalPhys: 2147483647
dwAvailPhys: 1234292736
dwTotalPageFile: 4294967295
dwTotalVirtual: 2147352576
dwAvailVirtual: 722063360
Hardware and SO:
2 x Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5345 @ 2.33GHz
RAM: 8192 MB
Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition
Version 5.2 (Build 3790 : Service Pack 2)(x86)

Thanks for any information you can give us.
JP

[wembley]

What version of VA Smalltalk are you running? This can affect my answer since only VA Smalltalk V7.5.2 can use more than 2GB of memory and has had its DLLs relocated.

You are most likely running into fragmented memory. When you set -mi to 100MB, it means that there must be at least 100MB of contiguous memory available for the allocation to success. I suggest using Microsoft's ProcessExplorer tool (download from http://www.sysinternals.com) to see where DLLs are loaded in memory). You will likely see that there are holes (perhaps large holes, but not 100MB holes) between DLLs. To make the maximum memory available to your application, you will need to:

1) relocate DLLs that are causing large holes in memory
2) make sure you are running with 3GB available to VA Smalltalk (see the readme for VA Smalltalk for details)

[waynej]

... only VA Smalltalk V7.5.2 can use more than 2GB of memory and has had its DLLs relocated.

But http://www2.instantiations.com/VAST/readme.htm#header_5 mentions "(7.0.1) Support for more than 2GB memory on Windows". Has something changed since then on this front?

[wembley]

Wayne -

Yes, we've packed at least some of the VA Smalltalk DLLs together so we aren't leaving big useless holes. But you will very likely notice (using ProcessExplorer) that Windows itself and/or other programs may leave unusable space -- at least unusable if you are allocating in 100MB chunks.

[jp.]

Hi John,

Thank you for your response.
We are using VAST 5.5.2, so we had to change the -mi parameter to 16MB.

Regards
JP

[wembley]

Using VAST 5.5.2, you can still reclaim some space by packing DLLs together. Microsoft's ProcessExplorer tool will tell you what the current desired and actual load addresses are. You can use Microsoft's Editbin tool's rebase option to squeeze out the holes.