Out of Memory

[Altera_Forum]

I've been fighting with my flash on a custom board for the last 2 days. I could not mount mtdblock0, turned out to be a problem with busybox. I got over that hurdle only to find a memory allocation problem, and I don't understand why. I have 4Mbytes of SRAM for the kernel and processes to run. Anybody see anything wrong? I will also get error messages when using simple command line arguments like "ls." 

 ls: page allocation failure. order:0, mode:0x50 a bunch of Stack and Trace info stuff <........>  or  ifconfig: page allocation failure. order:0, mode:0xd0 a bunch of Stack and Trace info stuff <.....> ifconfig: program too big  Also, I have modified my altera.c file to get me started. I used the "Maps for Altera Nios Development kit" under Mapping drivers, then modified the altera.c file. Can I use the "CFI Flash device in physical memory map," then generate a map file for my flash?  Here is what I&#39;m getting now when I launch the terminal window.  --Doug   uClinux/Nios II Altera Nios II support © 2004 Microtronix Datacom Ltd.  setup_arch: No persistant network settings signature at 00FF0000 Built 1 zonelists Kernel command line: root=/dev/mtdblock0 ro PID hash table entries: 32 (order: 5, 512 bytes) Dentry cache hash table entries: 1024 (order: 0, 4096 bytes) Inode-cache hash table entries: 512 (order: -1, 2048 bytes) Memory available: 2308k/4096k RAM, 0k/0k ROM (1399k kernel code, 310k data) Mount-cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes) NET: Registered protocol family 16 Serial: JTAG UART driver $Revision: 1.3 $ ttyJ0 at MMIO 0x80000840 (irq = 3) is a jtag_uart RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 4096K size 1024 blocksize smc_probe: 50000 Khz Nios SMSC LAN91C111 Driver (v2.1), (Linux Kernel 2.6) eth0: SMC91C11xFD(rev:1) at 0x80010300 IRQ:9 MEMSIZE:8192b NOWAIT:0 ADDR: 00:07:ed:00:00:00  smc_probe: 50000 Khz Nios Using anticipatory io scheduler Custom board flash (AMD): Found 1 x8 devices at 0x0 in 8-bit bank  Amd/Fujitsu Extended Query Table at 0x0040 Custom board flash (AMD): CFI does not contain boot bank location. Assuming top. number of CFI chips: 1 cfi_cmdset_0002: Disabling erase-suspend-program due to code brokenness. RedBoot partition parsing not available Using Altera NDK partition definition Creating 2 MTD partitions on "Custom board flash (AMD)": 0x00200000-0x00600000 : "romfs/jffs2" 0x00000000-0x00200000 : "loader/kernel" NET: Registered protocol family 2 IP: routing cache hash table of 512 buckets, 4Kbytes TCP: Hash tables configured (established 512 bind 1024) NET: Registered protocol family 1 NET: Registered protocol family 17 VFS: Mounted root (romfs filesystem) readonly. Freeing unused kernel memory: 48k freed (0x58e000 - 0x599000) expand: from=/ramfs.img to=/dev/ram0 oom-killer: gfp_mask=0x1d2 DMA per-cpu: empty Normal per-cpu: cpu 0 hot: low 2, high 6, batch 1 cpu 0 cold: low 0, high 2, batch 1 HighMem per-cpu: empty  Free pages: 128kB (0kB HighMem) Active:64 inactive:8 dirty:0 writeback:0 unstable:0 free:32 slab:452 mapped:0 pagetables:0 DMA free:0kB min:0kB low:0kB high:0kB active:0kB inactive:0kB present:0kB protections[]: 0 0 0 Normal free:128kB min:128kB low:256kB high:384kB active:256kB inactive:32kB present:4096kB protections[]: 0 0 0 HighMem free:0kB min:128kB low:256kB high:384kB active:0kB inactive:0kB present:0kB protections[]: 0 0 0 DMA: empty Normal: 0*4kB 0*8kB 0*16kB 0*32kB 0*64kB 1*128kB 0*256kB 0*512kB 0*1024kB 0*2048kB 0*4096kB = 128kB HighMem: empty Out of Memory: Killed process 1 (init). oom-killer: gfp_mask=0x1d2 DMA per-cpu: empty Normal per-cpu: cpu 0 hot: low 2, high 6, batch 1 cpu 0 cold: low 0, high 2, batch 1 HighMem per-cpu: empty  Free pages: 128kB (0kB HighMem) Active:70 inactive:0 dirty:0 writeback:0 unstable:0 free:32 slab:449 mapped:0 pagetables:0 DMA free:0kB min:0kB low:0kB high:0kB active:0kB inactive:0kB present:0kB protections[]: 0 0 0 Normal free:128kB min:128kB low:256kB high:384kB active:280kB inactive:0kB present:4096kB protections[]: 0 0 0 HighMem free:0kB min:128kB low:256kB high:384kB active:0kB inactive:0kB present:0kB protections[]: 0 0 0 DMA: empty Normal: 0*4kB 2*8kB 1*16kB 1*32kB 1*64kB 0*128kB 0*256kB 0*512kB 0*1024kB 0*2048kB 0*4096kB = 128kB HighMem: empty Out of Memory: Killed process 11 (sh). Out of Memory: Killed process 14 (sh). mount: page allocation failure. order:6, mode:0xd0 Stack from 00743d58:<0>  <0> 00000006<0> 0042c21c<0> 005b6d60<0> 00000010<0> 00000000<0> 00000001<0> 000000d0<0> 000000d0<0>  <0> 0000000d<0> 005acf6c<0> 005acf60<0> 005c1120<0> 005acf60<0> 005d9400<0> 0042c24c<0> 00430084<0>  <0> 00000000<0> 0043095c<0> 00000027<0> 0001abf0<0> 00004094<0> 0055fd94<0> 005bc260<0> 00000001<0>  <0> 000279c4<0> 00000001<0> 004305ac<0> 00000000<0> 00436390<0> 00000000<0> 00000000<0> 00000000<0>  <0> 00000080<0> 005b6d00<0> 00000001<0> 00023100<0> 00005170<0> 00000004<0> 005ffa00<0> ffffe000<0>  <0> 0044877c<0> 00445d58<0> 6e756f6d<0> 00000074<0> 00000010<0> 00000020<0> 00000000<0> 00000000<0> Call Trace:<0>  <0> [<00466958>]<0> [<0042be30>]<0> [<004466fc>]<0> [<00446954>]<0>  <0> [<004044f0>]<0> [<00403098>]<0> [<00402b38>]<0> Allocation of length 162244 from process 14 failed DMA per-cpu: empty Normal per-cpu: cpu 0 hot: low 2, high 6, batch 1 cpu 0 cold: low 0, high 2, batch 1 HighMem per-cpu: empty  Free pages: 96kB (0kB HighMem) Active:70 inactive:16 dirty:0 writeback:0 unstable:0 free:24 slab:434 mapped:0 pagetables:0 DMA free:0kB min:0kB low:0kB high:0kB active:0kB inactive:0kB present:0kB protections[]: 0 0 0 Normal free:96kB min:128kB low:256kB high:384kB active:280kB inactive:64kB present:4096kB protections[]: 0 0 0 HighMem free:0kB min:128kB low:256kB high:384kB active:0kB inactive:0kB present:0kB protections[]: 0 0 0 DMA: empty Normal: 0*4kB 0*8kB 0*16kB 1*32kB 1*64kB 0*128kB 0*256kB 0*512kB 0*1024kB 0*2048kB 0*4096kB = 96kB HighMem: empty Unable to allocate RAM for process text/data, errno 12    nios2-terminal:

[Altera_Forum]

Your problem is there is not enough available paged memory (only 128KB) to run many programs. You are going to have to try and reduce your kernel footprint. Start by disabling the following kernel config options 

 General Setup > Configure standard kernel features (for small systems) > Load all symbols for debugging/kksymoops Loadable module support > Enable loadable module support Device Drivers > Character Devices > Unix98 PTY support Device Drivers > Charater Devices > Legacy (BSD) PTY support File system > DOS/FAT/NT > VFAT (Windows-95) fs support File system > Network filesystems > NFS filesystem support Kernel Hacking > Full Symbolic/Source Debugging support  If that does not give you enough space you could look at reducing the size of the ramfs.img size to create a smaller ramdisk.

[Altera_Forum]

I&#39;ve been away from my desk for most of the day, so I just now got the chance to try your suggestions. That did the trick, I&#39;m able to get to the login prompt without the memory overload errors. This gives me something for now, thanks for the help. 

 Doug