zsh: fatal error: out of memory

zsh: fatal error: out of memory

[Monty Scroggins]

Does anyone have any ideas on this one?

I run zsh on many different machines..  on some of them
I get the following error when I attempt to run zsh. - 

	zsh: fatal error: out of memory

I removed the .zshenv and .zshrc files on these machines,
and I unset the PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH variables to see
if it would help..   but I got the same error..   Some of
the machines were able to run zsh previously..   I re-compiled
the shell.. same thing..   I tried multiple versions - 3.1.5, 
3.1.6, and 4.0.1 ...  all failed the same way..  I dont believe
the machine is really out of memory either..  I ran top and
noticed over a gig of free memory..

I am out of ideas..  

All of these machines are Sun SPARC boxes running 
solaris 2.6..

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated..

Monty


  

Re: zsh: fatal error: out of memory

[Bart Schaefer]

On Sep 10,  1:26pm, Monty Scroggins wrote:
}
} Does anyone have any ideas on this one?
} 
} 	zsh: fatal error: out of memory
} 
} All of these machines are Sun SPARC boxes running 
} solaris 2.6..

It's possible that you're running into a per-process limit, most likely
the maximum allowed size of the environment (e.g. the sum of the lengths
of all the environment variable names plus values).  Make sure you're
NOT doing `setopt all_export' or some such; if your login shell is not
zsh, try something like `printenv | wc' (I've forgotten whether solaris
has printenv) to find out how big the environment is.

-- 
Bart Schaefer                                 Brass Lantern Enterprises
http://www.well.com/user/barts              http://www.brasslantern.com

Zsh: http://www.zsh.org | PHPerl Project: http://phperl.sourceforge.net   

RE: zsh: fatal error: out of memory

[Monty Scroggins]

I have some more info on this one - I finally found
what appears to be a culprit.  The .profile has a
definition - HISTFILE=~/.sh_history; export HISTFILE

This seems to have been what was causing me all the
headaches...   Is this a bug in ZSH?  Is this something
that ZSH should handle??

Thanks

Monty


-----Original Message-----
From: Bart Schaefer [mailto:schaefer@brasslantern.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2001 9:07 AM
To: Monty Scroggins; zsh-workers@sunsite.dk
Subject: Re: zsh: fatal error: out of memory


On Sep 10,  1:26pm, Monty Scroggins wrote:
}
} Does anyone have any ideas on this one?
} 
} 	zsh: fatal error: out of memory
} 
} All of these machines are Sun SPARC boxes running 
} solaris 2.6..

It's possible that you're running into a per-process limit, most likely
the maximum allowed size of the environment (e.g. the sum of the lengths
of all the environment variable names plus values).  Make sure you're
NOT doing `setopt all_export' or some such; if your login shell is not
zsh, try something like `printenv | wc' (I've forgotten whether solaris
has printenv) to find out how big the environment is.

-- 
Bart Schaefer                                 Brass Lantern Enterprises
http://www.well.com/user/barts              http://www.brasslantern.com

Zsh: http://www.zsh.org | PHPerl Project: http://phperl.sourceforge.net   

Re: zsh: fatal error: out of memory

[Bart Schaefer]

On Sep 11,  5:22pm, Monty Scroggins wrote:
> 
> HISTFILE=~/.sh_history; export HISTFILE
> 
> This seems to have been what was causing me all the
> headaches...   Is this a bug in ZSH?  Is this something
> that ZSH should handle??

At the least it demonstrates a potential problem with different shells using
the same parameter name for what may be differently-formatted data.

What does the content of ~/.sh_history look like?  What's the file size?

It's also possible that it's the setting of HISTSIZE and/or SAVEHIST that
are actually the problem.  Are those parameters set?

RE: zsh: fatal error: out of memory

[Monty Scroggins]

These are the two parameters that were in the .profile

HISTSIZE=18000; export HISTSIZE
HISTFILE=~/.sh_history; export HISTFILE

The .sh_history file is 168560k and 7952 lines..
This seems like an absurdly large history file and I
am skeptical that anyone could take advantage of it all..
but maybe zsh should handle this type of problem..

I attempted to put a sample of the history file in this
message, but due to the control characters in the lines,
the mail client didn't paste in any text..  In looking
at the file in my text editor (NEdit) it looks like
each line starts with one or more <nul> characters followed
by the command strings..

If nothing else could (or should) be done about this problem,
maybe the error string could be enhanced a bit.. The error text
"out of memory", while being true, was vague enough
that I was heading down a wrong path to resolve the issue...

Just a thought...

Monty

-----Original Message-----
From: Bart Schaefer [mailto:schaefer@brasslantern.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2001 6:19 PM
To: Monty Scroggins; zsh-workers@sunsite.dk
Subject: Re: zsh: fatal error: out of memory


On Sep 11,  5:22pm, Monty Scroggins wrote:
>
> HISTFILE=~/.sh_history; export HISTFILE
>
> This seems to have been what was causing me all the
> headaches...   Is this a bug in ZSH?  Is this something
> that ZSH should handle??

At the least it demonstrates a potential problem with different shells using
the same parameter name for what may be differently-formatted data.

What does the content of ~/.sh_history look like?  What's the file size?

It's also possible that it's the setting of HISTSIZE and/or SAVEHIST that
are actually the problem.  Are those parameters set?

Re: zsh: fatal error: out of memory

[Bart Schaefer]

On Sep 12,  9:10am, Monty Scroggins wrote:
} 
} These are the two parameters that were in the .profile
} 
} HISTSIZE=18000; export HISTSIZE
} HISTFILE=~/.sh_history; export HISTFILE
} 
} The .sh_history file is 168560k and 7952 lines..
                                ^
			Really?  That would be 21700 bytes per line,
			average, which seems a bit unbelievable.

} but maybe zsh should handle this type of problem..

The question is, what is "this type".  I think it's more likely that the
problem is:

} each line starts with one or more <nul> characters followed
} by the command strings..

Zsh assumes that a history file consists only of the commands themselves;
even when `extended_history' is set, it inserts time stamps in `: ...;'
form so that they can be interpreted as commands. 

Any idea which shell created the .sh_history file in the first place?

-- 
Bart Schaefer                                 Brass Lantern Enterprises
http://www.well.com/user/barts              http://www.brasslantern.com

Zsh: http://www.zsh.org | PHPerl Project: http://phperl.sourceforge.net   

Re: zsh: fatal error: out of memory

[Oliver Kiddle]

Bart Schaefer wrote:
> 
> Any idea which shell created the .sh_history file in the first place?

It'll almost certainly be ksh. Looking at a few history files here (also
with NEdit), bash just has the commands and ksh has the initial <nul>
characters. 

I've also tried loading a ksh history file into zsh and it basically
works so maybe it is the size of the file which is causing problems. It
would seem consistent with an out of memory error.

Maybe we should suggest standardising the history file format on the
shell list.

Oliver

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RE: zsh: fatal error: out of memory

[Monty Scroggins]

My mistake.. the file size should have been 168560 bytes
not k bytes...   

By "type of problem", I assumed the problem is in the sheer
size of the history file.  I did not realize the format 
is different than what zsh expects.  

The shell history file would have been created from ksh.
It looks like ksh is used as a default shell for all the
users on that box..

Monty


-----Original Message-----

} The .sh_history file is 168560k and 7952 lines..
                                ^
			Really?  That would be 21700 bytes per line,
			average, which seems a bit unbelievable.

} but maybe zsh should handle this type of problem..

The question is, what is "this type".  I think it's more likely that the
problem is:

} each line starts with one or more <nul> characters followed
} by the command strings..

Zsh assumes that a history file consists only of the commands themselves;
even when `extended_history' is set, it inserts time stamps in `: ...;'
form so that they can be interpreted as commands. 

Any idea which shell created the .sh_history file in the first place?

Re: zsh: fatal error: out of memory

[Bart Schaefer]

On Sep 12,  5:08pm, Oliver Kiddle wrote:
> 
> Maybe we should suggest standardising the history file format on the
> shell list.

It might be useful to at least discuss the issue there.

RE: zsh: fatal error: out of memory

[Borsenkow Andrej]

> On Sep 12,  5:08pm, Oliver Kiddle wrote:
> >
> > Maybe we should suggest standardising the history file format on the
> > shell list.
> 
> It might be useful to at least discuss the issue there.

Supporting ksh (and may be even bash) history is not as bad if it is
possible to identify them.

-andrej