D3PLOT 22.1

Memory Consumption Problems

Memory consumption problems

The message unable to obtain more memory is given

This means that an attempt to allocate more memory has failed because the system has refused to give it. This can happen in many different contexts, but is most common when building animations under OpenGL, as this is a memory-intensive process.

The problem may be soluble at the system level:

(1) All systems
  • Check that other unnecessary processes competing for system resources have been shut down. Use the ps command (Unix) or the Task Manager (Windows NT) to examine system usage.
  • Check that you have enough swap space configured. (System administrator privileges are required to alter this.)

(2) Unix systems: Make sure that the operating system is not imposing arbitrary limits.
  • Artificial limits may be imposed in your command shell. The unlimit command can be used to lift all restrictions that you, as a user, have privileges to change.
  • The maximum "data segment size" in the kernel may be set to a low value. Many Unix systems come configured with this set to their physical memory size, which stops a given process spilling far into swap space. You will need system administrator privileges to change this as it requires the kernel to be modified and rebuilt.
  • Check that the window manager process has not been running for a long time, and has accumulated a lot of memory. If it has it may be necessary to kill it (ie revert to console mode) then restart it using startx .

If these do not work then you will have to reduce the amount of memory you are using within the D3PLOT process itself:

  • Use the FILE >MEMORY then VIEW database command to empty (partially or fully) the database.