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Issue Details (XML | Word | Printable)

Key: VWR-2748
Type: Bug Bug
Status: Resolved Resolved
Resolution: Needs More Info
Priority: Major Major
Assignee: Unassigned
Reporter: Ron Crimson
Votes: 0
Watchers: 0
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1. Second Life Viewer - VWR

Viewer won't use physical RAM beyond 2 GB, crashes instead

Created: 15/Oct/07 04:20 AM   Updated: 15/Jun/09 03:35 PM
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Component/s: Crashes
Affects Version/s: 1.18.3.5
Fix Version/s: 1.18.4.3

Environment:
Custom-built PC, Asus P5LD2, Intel Core 2 Duo E6320, 3GB (3072MB) DDR2-667 memory, ATI Radeon X1600Pro PCI-E 512MB video card, onboard audio & network, Windows XP Pro SP2 up-to-date with all critical hotfixes, machine is dedicated to SL and runs almost nothing else in the background. Usually about 2.7GB-2.8GB free physical memory.


 Description  « Hide
While it's well-known that the viewer tends to eat a ton of memory and eventually crashes, I observe a very particular behavoir for which I haven't found a pre-existing issue. My system has had 2GB of total RAM until recently and the viewer would always crash if that RAM was nearly completely full (less than 100MB remaining). After upgrading to 3GB, this continues to happen - but at the same point of reaching 2GB of used RAM, rather than continuing to use memory until all 3GB is full. It's as if Second Life doesn't know there's a third gigabyte of RAM there (whereas Windows, of course, does).

The crash itself happens very suddenly and without warning - no freeze or stuttering audio precedes it, the application simply quits back to the desktop in a split second and no further activity including disk swapping is observed. All the memory used by SL up to that point is immediately freed, Windows continues to run without problems and I can restart SL right away and continue with a new session.

My issue isn't with the fact that the viewer crashes, but that it apparently does so by being 'hard-coded' not to use any available memory beyond 2048MB (or that it attempts to do so but crashes trying to request RAM beyond the 2GB mark)....BTW, I use a nifty little systray app which displays current RAM usage as a mini-graph updated every 4 seconds (showing the last 60 seconds of usage) so I'm able to monitor it at all times while running the viewer in a maximized window - thus being able to reliably predict crashes about to happen due to hitting the 2GB barrier. Right before the viewer does crash, the systray monitor reports just a little over 1024MB as "free."



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Ron Crimson made changes - 15/Oct/07 04:32 AM
Field Original Value New Value
Priority Normal [ 4 ] Major [ 3 ]
Description While it's well-known that the viewer tends to eat a ton of memory and eventually crashes, I observe a very particular behavoir for which I haven't found a pre-existing issue. My system has had 2GB of total RAM until recently and the viewer would always crash if that RAM was nearly completely full (less than 100MB remaining). After upgrading to 3GB, this continues to happen - but at the same point of reaching 2GB of used RAM, rather than continuing to use memory until all 3GB is full. It's as if Second Life doesn't know there's a third gigabyte of RAM there (whereas Windows, of course, does).

The crash itself happens very suddenly and without warning - no freeze or stuttering audio precedes it, the application simply quits back to the desktop in a split second and no further activity including disk swapping is observed. All the memory used by SL up to that point is immediately freed, Windows continues to run without problems and I can restart SL right away and continue with a new session.

My issue isn't with the fact that the viewer crashes, but that it apparently does so by being 'hard-coded' not to use any available memory beyond 2048MB (or that it attempts to do so but crashes trying to request RAM beyond the 2GB mark).
While it's well-known that the viewer tends to eat a ton of memory and eventually crashes, I observe a very particular behavoir for which I haven't found a pre-existing issue. My system has had 2GB of total RAM until recently and the viewer would always crash if that RAM was nearly completely full (less than 100MB remaining). After upgrading to 3GB, this continues to happen - but at the same point of reaching 2GB of used RAM, rather than continuing to use memory until all 3GB is full. It's as if Second Life doesn't know there's a third gigabyte of RAM there (whereas Windows, of course, does).

The crash itself happens very suddenly and without warning - no freeze or stuttering audio precedes it, the application simply quits back to the desktop in a split second and no further activity including disk swapping is observed. All the memory used by SL up to that point is immediately freed, Windows continues to run without problems and I can restart SL right away and continue with a new session.

My issue isn't with the fact that the viewer crashes, but that it apparently does so by being 'hard-coded' not to use any available memory beyond 2048MB (or that it attempts to do so but crashes trying to request RAM beyond the 2GB mark)....BTW, I use a nifty little systray app which displays current RAM usage as a mini-graph updated every 4 seconds (showing the last 60 seconds of usage) so I'm able to monitor it at all times while running the viewer in a maximized window - thus being able to reliably predict crashes about to happen due to hitting the 2GB barrier. Right before the viewer does crash, the systray monitor reports just a little over 1024MB as "free."
Kevin Susenko added a comment - 27/Oct/07 11:18 PM
That's because SL is a 32-bit program running on a 32-bit version of Windows, so it can't access more than 2gb of memory at once. XP uses the rest of the memory as system memory.

Try http://searchwincomputing.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid68_gci1108831,00.html to allow a single program to use all 3gb of the memory.

I'll leave the issue open for now though, because crashing once it reaches the 2gb limit would mean a memory leak, even though the limit itself isn't a bug.


Ron Crimson added a comment - 29/Oct/07 07:21 AM
Hmm! Thanks for the enlightening response Kevin...especially the URL. I've made the change to my OS boot options and will report on the results after "stress-testing" SL (by visiting busy/high-texture sims).
My understanding has always been, though, that WinXP does support 4GB of memory - but can actually only recognize 3GB as available to itself. That's the main reason I upgraded my memory from 2GB to 3GB, rather than going for 4GB. I've never before heard that a single application running under Windows was only allowed a 2GB maximum of addressable space. Also - come to think of it - SL has always crashed for me at the physical 2GB limit, regardless of how much of that 2GB was in use by the OS itself and/or other applications (I sometimes have Firefox etc. open in the background). I don't have any other software that's memory-hungry enough to actually see if memory usage ever dips into the third gig of RAM - otherwise I could at least demonstrate the problem isn't SL-specific. At this point I still believe it is...regardless, we'll see what the 3GB boot option does for me.

Ron Crimson added a comment - 11/Nov/07 10:39 AM
I'm marking this resolved... the new version 1.18.4.3 doesn't seem to exhibit this specific issue anymore even though SL still won't use more than 2GB out of my 3GB (not that I'm complaining about that, mind you ... whether or not the 3GB boot option for WinXP Pro SP2 actually made a difference or not, I can't say for sure but I don't think it really does.
Unless somebody else has something to add here, I'm closing this issue as I'm happy for the moment. _

Ron Crimson made changes - 11/Nov/07 10:39 AM
Status Open [ 1 ] Resolved [ 5 ]
Fix Version/s 1.18.4.3 [ 10190 ]
Resolution Needs More Info [ 4 ]
Rob Linden made changes - 22/Dec/07 03:08 AM
Workflow jira [ 15952 ] jira-2007-12-21 [ 27954 ]
Rob Linden made changes - 22/Dec/07 03:19 AM
Workflow jira [ 27954 ] jira-2007-12-21 [ 28599 ]
Rob Linden made changes - 22/Dec/07 03:52 PM
Workflow jira-2007-12-21 [ 28599 ] jira-2007-12-22 [ 34949 ]
Rob Linden made changes - 22/Dec/07 10:43 PM
Workflow jira-2007-12-22 [ 34949 ] jira-2007-12-22a [ 46116 ]
Rob Linden made changes - 22/Dec/07 11:09 PM
Workflow jira-2007-12-22 [ 46116 ] jira-2007-12-22a [ 47463 ]
Eidur Kappler added a comment - 30/Jan/08 03:58 AM
I am still experiencing this very issue.
I think the problem lies in how my OS (Vista 64bit) handles RAM allocation. I tweaked Vista to reduce memory usage to the maximum, but what I experience is very weird. When I run with 2 gigs only SL client works great for me, even in laggy situations.
As far as I have all 4 gigs of ram in my machine, instead of taking advance of it, as soon as the 2 gigs "limit" of usage is broken, I experience freezing and crashes...
Weird, cause it only happens with SL client.

Eidur Kappler made changes - 30/Jan/08 03:58 AM
Resolution Needs More Info [ 4 ]
Status Resolved [ 5 ] Reopened [ 4 ]
Sue Linden made changes - 13/Nov/08 11:09 AM
Workflow jira-2007-12-22a [ 47463 ] jira-2008-11-14 [ 64875 ]
Sue Linden made changes - 13/Nov/08 11:31 AM
Workflow jira-2007-12-22a [ 64875 ] jira-2008-11-14 [ 72982 ]
Sue Linden made changes - 13/Nov/08 05:02 PM
Workflow jira-2008-11-14 [ 72982 ] jira-2008-11-14a [ 97952 ]
Sue Linden made changes - 13/Nov/08 05:17 PM
Workflow jira-2008-11-14 [ 97952 ] jira-2008-11-14a [ 103551 ]
Sue Linden made changes - 13/Nov/08 05:27 PM
Workflow jira-2008-11-14 [ 103551 ] jira-2008-11-14a [ 107349 ]
Sue Linden made changes - 13/Nov/08 05:42 PM
Workflow jira-2008-11-14 [ 107349 ] jira-2008-11-14a [ 112802 ]
Sue Linden made changes - 13/Nov/08 06:13 PM
Workflow jira-2008-11-14 [ 112802 ] jira-2008-11-14a [ 123771 ]
Sue Linden made changes - 13/Nov/08 06:40 PM
Workflow jira-2008-11-14 [ 123771 ] jira-2008-11-14a [ 133893 ]
Sue Linden made changes - 13/Nov/08 06:58 PM
Workflow jira-2008-11-14 [ 133893 ] jira-2008-11-14a [ 141156 ]
Ramzi Linden added a comment - 15/Jun/09 03:35 PM
This issue was resolved as "Needs More Info" during a batch clean-up of PJIRA issues.

Reason: for an extended length of time, this bug seems to be missing enough details (reproducible steps) for Linden Lab to import the bug and investigate. Also the last affected version of the viewer on this report is viewer 1.21 or 1.20, 1.19, or even earlier, which are versions that are no longer actively supported.

It is possible that this bug is indeed valid and should remain open-- however, Linden Lab needs the following pieces of information before it is Reopened:

To reopen, please do all of the following:

(1) It is very important to confirm that this bug still occurs in the latest official version 1.23. Please upgrade to that version by browsing to http://get.secondlife.com , and test if you can still reproduce the bug using Viewer 1.23.

(2) If so, then please Reopen this issue and BE SURE to choose the "Affects Version/s" = 1.23

(3) Also, re-describe the steps that another person can follow to experience this bug. An example of a good "recipe" for a bug report can be found here: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Issue_tracker#Guidelines_for_a_bug_report

(4) Come and attend the inworld bug triages, where you can meet with Linden Lab employees to consider, verify, and expedite bugs for fixing. For more information, see http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Bug_triage

Thank you for helping us improve Second Life!


Ramzi Linden made changes - 15/Jun/09 03:35 PM
Status Reopened [ 4 ] Resolved [ 5 ]
Resolution Needs More Info [ 4 ]