[rabbitmq-discuss] ll_alloc errors on RabbitMQ 2.1.1

Thu Nov 18 05:49:19 GMT 2010

Manuel,

Manuel DE FERRAN wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 12:31 PM, Matthew Sackman <matthew at rabbitmq.com 
> <mailto:matthew at rabbitmq.com>> wrote:
> 
>     Howdy,
> 
>     On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 11:56:25AM +0100, Manuel DE FERRAN wrote:
>      > recently we upgraded to version 2.1.1. We picked up the official
>     debian
>      > package, and installed it on a debian lenny. And we face problems
>     of memory
>      > allocation 'll_alloc: Cannot allocate 486539264 bytes of memory
>     (of type
>      > "port_tab")' when invoking rabbitmqctl.
> 
>     How much RAM is installed in the machine? How much is available? Have
>     you performed any configuration of Rabbit such as altering the
>     vm_high_memory_watermark value? Is it a 32-bit or 64-bit installation?
> 
> 
> 
> 1.5 GB is assigned to this machine (that's a xen virtual machine). There 
> is more than 500MB of available memory. We released up to 1GB, and that 
> did not fix the issue.
> 
> We are using the default configuration, means no configuration at all.
> 
> And that's a 64 bits installation, we grabbed the debian package from 
> http://www.rabbitmq.com/releases/rabbitmq-server/v2.1.1/.

So the rabbitmq-server itself is running fine and you only encounter 
problems with rabbitmqctl? Strange indeed.

What version of Erlang is running on that machine?

Looking at the Erlang source code, the error would appear to crop up 
when the operating system is configured with a very high file descriptor 
limit. What does 'ulimit -n' report? (NB: you should run that as the 
'rabbitmq' user). If the figure is in the many millions, I suggest you 
set a lower limit in the o/s config. Alternativly, set the ERL_MAX_PORTS 
environment variable.

I wonder whether there is some strange hypervisor interaction going on. 
Could you perhaps try a different kind of VM?

Regards,

Matthias.