Memory leak with Maya 6 on Linux

[jiann]

Yeah. I'm pretty experienced with debian and also have come from a redhat background. All dependencies and stuff should all be in order - I have been running previous versions of Maya on this install for years without a trouble.

Although there are differences between different distributions, if you know what you are doing, everything is essentially Linux. There is no fundamental reason for Maya not to work on Debian, and I have been doing so for years anyway. The reason Alias "certify" it for RH is that they need a system that they can say it will work on definitely - one that any newbie to Linux can just install and it should work. However, other than the certification there is no reason why Maya shouldn't work on anything else - I bet you you could even get it going in FreeBSD with its Linux binary loading!!

You are right in that it is compiled specifically for Red Hat which means that it should definitely run on it. But just because it is in an RPM doesn't mean that it will work better on a RPM distribution. There is just as much chance that a SuSE distribution has different libraries installed as there is my Debian installation having different libraries.

The defining factor is the libraries installed in the distribution - which will be slightly different than RH whichever distribution you choose - not the RPM factor.

Maya is also an extremely self contained package. It just installs EVERYTHING in /usr/aw/ and not all over the system. As it is a very multi-platform program they tend to keep everything nice and tight without using too many dynamic libraries - at least from my understanding!

Well this sure has generated a lot of discussion! Lets hope it eventually results in a solution

[ithuriel]

Hey Shaidar, I just finished my upgrade to Maya6 today and what I always do is search the forums for keywords "maya $versionnumber problems" so I can read about the current problems for this current version. I came upon this thread and I tried right away to see if I am getting this memory leak problem and it seems that I am.

Although my system is not fully qualified by Alias, Maya 5 ran on it for a long while and never has it gone crazy on me. Its weird though how it eats up my memory.

I was looking at the output of "top" and Maya likes to small pieces of chunk per operation. For example, on first bootup, Maya on my machine takes about 170mb of ram (weird because at my friends house, I setup his Windows version for him and it only took 120mb on bootup).

I made a cube, maya eats approx 1mb, I start moving the cube around and it starts eating approx 300k per move. I realized then that maybe Maya is eating memory because of the 'undo' feature. But then I decided I would scale, rotate, and duplicate this object and baam, it ate approx 20mb of memory..And this is just a 6 sided cube..

[jiann]

Yep, exactly the same as here. What are your specs?

[ithuriel]

Slackware 10 w/ kernel 2.6.8.1
AthlonXP2000, 512mb ram, Geforce FX5200

I had already removed 5.0 on my system.. Man its such a hassle to put it back, I hope i find the solution tonight!

[deke-kincaid]

you guys wouldn't happen to have unlimited(infinate) undo on? You should turn this off in the prefs and make it something like 50-100 undos.

[jiann]

Nah, I (and I think the others) have made sure of that.

It seems something specifically to do with moving objects/faces etc around while the channel box is on.

It definitely happens more in different areas of maya. Whilst modeling it was extremely annoying and I noticed the leak all the time, having to restart X regularly.

However, when doing other stuff like animating the leak is no where near as apparent.

I think it has to do with how much you drag stuff around the viewport - hence the sphere drag example above.

[joojaa]

Still odesnt overrule undo thing as a history operation, especialy blind one requiers often a 100 times more memory than a mere channel change. So it is a indication of that too. Having 300 history operations with undo to the max will eat all your memory even if you flush history (as its still in ondo queue).

Being more intensive modelling seems to suggest it is the undo!

my friend alo tought he had a memory leak but it was just his undo!

[jiann]

Nah. It happens even with undo turned off. Also, it happens _before_ you even move an object, ie while you are just dragging it around the viewport, therefore, no undoable action hasn't even taken place!

[jiann]

Out of curiosity, how much RAM and swap space do you guys who aren't experiencing the memory leak have?

I just upgraded my machine to 2GB ram and now have a massive swap file. I don't really notice the memory leak as much any more.

First of all it takes a lot longer to use up the 2GB of actual ram, and with masses of swap space the X process seems to be able to move its "leaked" memory into swap and exist quite happily there.

Now instead of using up like 400MB of physical memory X uses up 400MB of virtual (swap) memory instead.

Because of this I don't really notice any slow downs for quite a lot longer..

One more piece in the puzzle

[ithuriel]

Dont know how, but after reinstalling Maya6 and the update but this time, instead of copying old Redhat compat libs, I just copied the libs that came with my system to the maya lib folder and things work great.

Right now im just trying to figure out ways to crash Maya, to see if things are really ok and so that later on, I can avoid doing that certain thing that Maya will hate.

-- out of topic:
got houdini7 apprentice running too trying to crash it as well and so far it hasnt.

[user_deleted]

Re: Shaider quote "Out of curiosity, how much RAM and swap space do you guys who aren't experiencing the memory leak have?"

Workstation Specs:
CPU: Intel P4-HT 3.2 GHz (Hyperthreading Enabled)
Motherboard: Abit IC7-G
RAM: 1 GB OCZ Dual Channel PC4000 500MHz
HDD: x2 Western Digital 120 GB 7200 RPM
Graphics: NVIDIA Quadro FX 500 AGP / Driver: IA32 53.36
OS: SuSE Linux Professional 9.1 (32-bit) / Linux Kernel: 2.6.5-7 / Linux Swap: 1 GB / File System: ReiserFS
Desktop: KDE 3.3.1
3D: Maya Unlimited 6.0.1

[joojaa]

1-4 gigs depends on the machine (theres about 50 of them to test on). but thats not the point i can monitor the amount of mem usage nevertheless. It doesnet leak, whan i move the thing around. I mena i would be damn scared if maya leaked 20 megs jsut by moving a sphere around for a while. But it does not.

[agentex]

This problem is all over the place (huge mem leak), myself and my colleagues have the problem on older AMD hardware with Nvidia GeForce and ATI Fire GL hardware. Debian and windows systems suffer.

If I were Alias I would look at the changes between code versions, something went haywire.

[joojaa]

Are you sure its not only your sytem... I mean theres a lot of persons that i se that dont have this problem at all? Maybe theres something worng but if some systems dont have it and some do, but are not alias supported then i se no reason why they should change anything. Might not even be alias fault at all.

Distros frequently have bugs too... And thats the reason why they support one distro only, officialy or they would never do anything except patch different maya platform issues! Is that realy what you want?

PS edity and define alot? I mean is 50 non leaking amd opteron /intel xeon and p4 stations not enough of proof theres no leak? If theres not one reported on single one of them and ive been cheking altleast 3 of every type to verify the problem?! Ans i dont se anything out of ordinary.

Anyeway alias has seemingly taken this in as abug so... jsut keep bombarding them, but as i said its a hellofa problem to solve if it does not even exist on some machines.

ps. by the way the fact that others have porblems doesent rule out stupid configuration on theirt part too!

[jiann]

In reply to:
Dont know how, but after reinstalling Maya6 and the update but this time, instead of copying old Redhat compat libs, I just copied the libs that came with my system to the maya lib folder and things work great.

Which libs exactly?

[jiann]

Joojaa,

Just because you don't personally experience the problem is no reason to attack everyone else who actually does, making them seem in the wrong! Computers are varied things and just because you individually don't have the problem is no reason to rule out the existence of a bug that effects other machines!

And bugs are varied things as well. I think you will find that MANY bugs in computer programs are only exhibited on certain systems and certain places. To rule out the problem as a bug because it doesn't happen on certain machines is a bit too harsh.

While I agree that there is a chance that is a configuration issue, nothing can be ruled out when numerous varied people a experiencing the same issue.

[ithuriel]

If you go inside /usr/aw/maya6.0/bin, youll see symbolic links to libs in that folder such as the libstd and such. What i did was just copy the same libs from my /usr/lib and placed it in that folder (/usr/aw/maya6.0/bin). some people recommended using the compat libs from redhat but when i do that it just gives me signall 11 error when i launch, but the program still continues to open however it eats up memory.

[joojaa]

In reply to:
Just because you don't personally experience the problem is no reason to attack everyone else who actually does.

Im not attacking im just wondering how the hell you can be so adamant about the fact that its not your fault? I mean atlest saying it might be your setup is better than saying maya has a leak wich is definetly a bug, and your sure its not in your setup.

I eman a configiration problem is faar more likely, taking in cosideration what youve said. Tough its faar likely to be a combination of BOTH theese things anyway if you can circumvent by reconfiguring why not do so?

Im sure there are many resident bughs in maya but if others can circumvent theese poroblems then you should try to do so too, instead whining try to do something about it. Whining never takes you out.

Im trying to get you to look at facts wich may lead to you getting the problem solved, while you are so intensely angry that you fail to se it. I can understand that, but being angry is not the time when your most openminded.

Mind you a text based forum is allways about 2 time as hostile as truth when you cant see or hear the rone of peoples voices, and yes sometimes voice of reason needs a huge mallet to go to peoples heads. Im not hostile towards you. Im just trying to woigh the facts as whats the most likely problem, As more and more people start to claim they have solved the problem it seems im right!

[geoffcrowther]

i tried to recreate the issue, and no luck. no memory leack here according to the instructions posted.

running debian sarge, latest updates, nvidia ti4200 vid card.

care to post the scene on here to see if there is something specific to the file perhaps?

[chicorico]

in reply to:
"care to post the scene on here to see if there is something specific to the file perhaps?"

In my case (and I believe with the other people) the problem occurs on any scene. The fact that making an empty scene and doing nothing but adding a sphere triggers it would seem to rule out any scene-specific oddities, since thats about as simple as you can get.

I note that you're using the same video card that I am (Ti 4200) and I am experiencing the leak and apparently you aren't. This makes me wonder what else could be problematically different on our systems. I've tried modifying various settings (disabling/enabling twin-view, changing resolutions/color-depth,etc) to no avail.

If anyone from Alias/NVidia is listening/interested, I've discovered a few minor things about the bug:
-The leak not only depends on whether the channel box is showing, it also depends on how much of the channel box is visible - If I have both the channel box and layer editor visible and drag the divider all the way up so the channel box is mostly obscured, the memory leak happens at about 1 meg every 5 seconds for both maya and X during the drag-test. If i drag the divider down to fully uncover the channel box the leak is about 7-10 megs every 5 seconds. Moving the maya window so that the channel box is obscured by another window or is offscreen does not seem to slow the leak.
-Secondly, X's memory usage behaves as follows: During the drag test, X's memory usage increases at a rate roughly similar to maya's.. And when quitting maya the memory usage does not go back down. However, if I launch maya again and do the drag test again, memory usage for X stays constant for a while before suddenly starting to grow again - so I'm assuming whatever is getting leaked in X is getting reused in some manner and total memory usage doesnt start increasing again until the point at which all the previously leaked memory has been used. What this all means I'm not sure but maybe it can be helpful to someone...
-Eric