[Valgrind-users] Memory allocation errors starting valgrind

[Art H. <ah...@ai...>]

Hi.

I'm building from CVS HEAD. The last valgrind to work on my machine was
one built around a month ago or so, and since then all my builds
complete but valgrind fails to run. A perusal of the valgrind mailing
lists didn't show anyone posting a message demonstrating the same
problem as I'm seeing so I'm writing in looking for help.

I found the location of the error message (coregrind/ume.c) valgrind
prints out and uncommented out a printf() call to see what it was doing;
that's the stuff about elfbkr, b, and delta ...

$ valgrind ls -l
elfbrk=0xb80ed9a0 b=0x80f4000 delta=268435456
sbrk failed while adjusting brk base: perhaps we hit the datasize ulimit?
failed to load /usr/local/lib/valgrind/stage2: Cannot allocate memory
$ ulimit -a
core file size        (blocks, -c) 0
data seg size         (kbytes, -d) unlimited
file size             (blocks, -f) unlimited
max locked memory     (kbytes, -l) unlimited
max memory size       (kbytes, -m) unlimited
open files                    (-n) 1024
pipe size          (512 bytes, -p) 8
stack size            (kbytes, -s) 8192
cpu time             (seconds, -t) unlimited
max user processes            (-u) 1024
virtual memory        (kbytes, -v) unlimited

My machine has 128M of memory, which has not been a problem before. I'm
currently running the 2.6.2-rc1 kernel, and have been running 2.6.X
kernels for months. My libc is libc6-2.3.2-ds10 (I'm using Debian), and
I'm compiling with Debian's latest gcc-3.3.3-pre compiler.

Do I now need more memory in the machine for running valgrind? The
ulimit info shows my datasize is unlimited. A kernel problem? Something
else?

Art Haas
-- 
Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities
the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind.

-Thomas Jefferson to James Smith, 1822