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"low memory" warning Issue Tools
issueid=267 06-22-2009 09:20 PM
Human being with feelings
"low memory" warning
would be good to have a 'low memory' warning when system is running low on physical memory

lots of issues reported seem to stem from low physical memory situations. assuming that proper low memory situations can always crash apps, it'd still be nice to have some kind of obvious warning in the app when physical RAM is getting to danger levels (say, down to 10% - maybe some red text in the title bar or something near the audio settings?)

this would at least help new users diagnose problems and possibly also give them a chance to scale back their session before anything really bad happens. probably only needs to update every 30sec or so anyway.

edit: see here http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=35626
Issue Details
Issue Type Closed Issue
Project Deprecated REAPER issue tracker
Category Stability
Status Implemented
Priority 5 - Medium
Affected Version 3.04
Closed Version 4.76
Yes votes 9
No votes 1
Assigned Users (none)
Tags (none)

06-23-2009 07:50 AM
Human being with feelings
 
I agree with that.

But why does an application need to crash in such cases. Is this an limitation of the operating system?

http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=10868


DONE (4.76)
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06-23-2009 03:20 PM
Human being with feelings
 
let's say you have 50 bytes of memory free. a plugin requests 100 bytes of memory from Windows. that request fails, and the memory pointer returned points to 'null'.

the plugin is meant to check the pointer is valid before it uses it, but at this point there's a few different things that can happen.

if it doesn't check if it's okay, you'll get a null pointer crash (possibly at some point in the future!) and it'll take the whole process down.

if it does check and find out that the pointer is bad, you're still in trouble. let's say the plugin has a crash handler somewhere that writes to a log file. it might successfully get to that point, but then Windows need another 100 bytes of memory to open the file for writing, say. so there's another place either Windows or the plugin can freak out (depending on which bit breaks).

or the plugin might need more memory to clean itself up, for example.

running out of physical RAM/address space is like running out of oxygen, when you get to that point you're in big trouble. much better to have a warning so you can save your project/unload some VSTs before it all goes bad .
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06-23-2009 03:22 PM
Human being with feelings
 
not 100% sure, but this can also possibly happen if you have lots of memory free but it's split over lots of places (fragmentation), and a plugin requests a big chunk of contiguous memory. although having a big page file can probably mitigate that.
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01-16-2015 12:31 PM
Human being with feelings
 
DONE (4.76)

Preferences/General: Warn when memory use reaches ...
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04-04-2015 07:39 AM
Human being with feelings
 
Implemented.
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