Hanging connects, exhausted resources, memory leaks, bocked everything ... Unusable!

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Hanging connects, exhausted resources, memory leaks, bocked everything ... Unusable!

Guido Stepken
I am doing server tuning, building up fast server systems for a very long time now.

Yesterday i installed 1.2.1, expecting to see a far more matured Pharo Smalltalk, stable, pretty nice new features.

I opened up the Memory Grapher, hmmm.... works fine, watching memory pumping. A bit strange, seeing a Pharo consuming and freeing megabytes of memory space without  any load. But ok!

Then i opened up TestSuites, marked some tests, let them run. Ups! Desktop hanging.

I expected to have with Pharo a well done, stable multitasking environment, but Pharo hangs everywhere, is leaking lots of memory, is keeping up connections, wasting resources unneccessarily, having problems with internal race conditions on semaphores, mutexes, feels same like "Big Kernel Lock", but even without MultiProcessing.

The Pharo Team IMHO is very much missing important knowledge about modern Operating System Design, what Pharo Smalltalk OS is in fact, without being able to fulfill the minimum standards i expect from a usable Smalltalk OS.

As system operator or enterprise i cannot offer such a system, that has to be restarted twenty times a day, due to hangs, memory leaks, sucking connection handles, ..., whatever!

tnx for your understanding!

regards, Guido Stepken
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Re: Hanging connects, exhausted resources, memory leaks, bocked everything ... Unusable!

carlo.t
Hi Guido

How did you come to all your conclusions of Pharo if you simply installed and opened up Pharo 1.2.1 and only ran the tests?
Memory leaks, connections, unusable etc???

If you have any explicit and constructive feedback then the Pharo community can at least use that to improve it....

Cheers
Carlo

On 15 Jul 2011, at 12:39 PM, Guido Stepken wrote:

I am doing server tuning, building up fast server systems for a very long time now.

Yesterday i installed 1.2.1, expecting to see a far more matured Pharo Smalltalk, stable, pretty nice new features.

I opened up the Memory Grapher, hmmm.... works fine, watching memory pumping. A bit strange, seeing a Pharo consuming and freeing megabytes of memory space without  any load. But ok!

Then i opened up TestSuites, marked some tests, let them run. Ups! Desktop hanging.

I expected to have with Pharo a well done, stable multitasking environment, but Pharo hangs everywhere, is leaking lots of memory, is keeping up connections, wasting resources unneccessarily, having problems with internal race conditions on semaphores, mutexes, feels same like "Big Kernel Lock", but even without MultiProcessing.

The Pharo Team IMHO is very much missing important knowledge about modern Operating System Design, what Pharo Smalltalk OS is in fact, without being able to fulfill the minimum standards i expect from a usable Smalltalk OS.

As system operator or enterprise i cannot offer such a system, that has to be restarted twenty times a day, due to hangs, memory leaks, sucking connection handles, ..., whatever!

tnx for your understanding!

regards, Guido Stepken


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Re: Hanging connects, exhausted resources, memory leaks, bocked everything ... Unusable!

Luc Fabresse
Hi Guido,

 I am always interested when some companies try to really use Pharo in production. Some already does. If there are issues we would be glad to improve the system and correct them.
But, I never experienced all you stated certainly because we have different environments and uses.
 So please, give us real feedback:
 - which VM did you used
 - which OS
 - which tests hang your OS
 - ...

Regards,

#Luc



2011/7/15 Carlo <[hidden email]>
Hi Guido

How did you come to all your conclusions of Pharo if you simply installed and opened up Pharo 1.2.1 and only ran the tests?
Memory leaks, connections, unusable etc???

If you have any explicit and constructive feedback then the Pharo community can at least use that to improve it....

Cheers
Carlo

On 15 Jul 2011, at 12:39 PM, Guido Stepken wrote:

I am doing server tuning, building up fast server systems for a very long time now.

Yesterday i installed 1.2.1, expecting to see a far more matured Pharo Smalltalk, stable, pretty nice new features.

I opened up the Memory Grapher, hmmm.... works fine, watching memory pumping. A bit strange, seeing a Pharo consuming and freeing megabytes of memory space without  any load. But ok!

Then i opened up TestSuites, marked some tests, let them run. Ups! Desktop hanging.

I expected to have with Pharo a well done, stable multitasking environment, but Pharo hangs everywhere, is leaking lots of memory, is keeping up connections, wasting resources unneccessarily, having problems with internal race conditions on semaphores, mutexes, feels same like "Big Kernel Lock", but even without MultiProcessing.

The Pharo Team IMHO is very much missing important knowledge about modern Operating System Design, what Pharo Smalltalk OS is in fact, without being able to fulfill the minimum standards i expect from a usable Smalltalk OS.

As system operator or enterprise i cannot offer such a system, that has to be restarted twenty times a day, due to hangs, memory leaks, sucking connection handles, ..., whatever!

tnx for your understanding!

regards, Guido Stepken



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Re: Hanging connects, exhausted resources, memory leaks, bocked everything ... Unusable!

Stéphane Ducasse
In reply to this post by Guido Stepken
Sven from beta9 is using Pharo as a server and it works well from what he told us during the last sprint.
Netstyle is also using pharo for Seaside.

Now there is certainly place for improvements and pharo is improving every day (but because there are cool pharoers improving it).

I noticed in the past that you always have this same aggressive tone.
And even worse, we value critics and non politically correct discussions but not systematic bashing.
What I dislike is the tone of your email. So do not continue like that if you want to have any support for people.
else you will be plonkified :)

> I am doing server tuning, building up fast server systems for a very long time now.
>
> Yesterday i installed 1.2.1, expecting to see a far more matured Pharo Smalltalk, stable, pretty nice new features.
>
> I opened up the Memory Grapher, hmmm.... works fine, watching memory pumping. A bit strange, seeing a Pharo consuming and freeing megabytes of memory space without  any load. But ok!
>
> Then i opened up TestSuites, marked some tests, let them run. Ups! Desktop hanging.
>
> I expected to have with Pharo a well done, stable multitasking environment, but Pharo hangs everywhere, is leaking lots of memory, is keeping up connections, wasting resources unneccessarily, having problems with internal race conditions on semaphores, mutexes, feels same like "Big Kernel Lock", but even without MultiProcessing.

Only that. Not bad. We are soo dumb that it could be so worse.

> The Pharo Team IMHO is very much missing important knowledge about modern Operating System Design, what Pharo Smalltalk OS is in fact, without being able to fulfill the minimum standards i expect from a usable Smalltalk OS.
>
> As system operator or enterprise i cannot offer such a system, that has to be restarted twenty times a day, due to hangs, memory leaks, sucking connection handles, ..., whatever!
>
> tnx for your understanding!

My understanding is that you do not know how to communicate.

Now my advice is to try 1.3 because lot of improvements were applied and for example Zinc is a good starting part.

>
> regards, Guido Stepken


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Re: Hanging connects, exhausted resources, memory leaks, bocked everything ... Unusable!

Janko Mivšek
Hi all,

Before shooting the messenger of bad news let we rather acknowledge that
there are problems in Squeak/Pharo on the socket/semaphore/process
field. I also admit, I somewhat lost nervers on Pharo as Guido did and
I'd like to post the same post. But of course bringing bad messages must
always be done diplomatically of you won't like to be shoot :)

So, known problems are: socket limit over about 200, semaphores (i
remember discussion back, is this solved?) protecting critical sections
doesn't work well, processes?

So Guido is right, don't shut them, let his anger rather energitize us
to finally solve them!

Janko

S, Stéphane Ducasse piše:

> Sven from beta9 is using Pharo as a server and it works well from what he told us during the last sprint.
> Netstyle is also using pharo for Seaside.
>
> Now there is certainly place for improvements and pharo is improving every day (but because there are cool pharoers improving it).
>
> I noticed in the past that you always have this same aggressive tone.
> And even worse, we value critics and non politically correct discussions but not systematic bashing.
> What I dislike is the tone of your email. So do not continue like that if you want to have any support for people.
> else you will be plonkified :)
>
>> I am doing server tuning, building up fast server systems for a very long time now.
>>
>> Yesterday i installed 1.2.1, expecting to see a far more matured Pharo Smalltalk, stable, pretty nice new features.
>>
>> I opened up the Memory Grapher, hmmm.... works fine, watching memory pumping. A bit strange, seeing a Pharo consuming and freeing megabytes of memory space without  any load. But ok!
>>
>> Then i opened up TestSuites, marked some tests, let them run. Ups! Desktop hanging.
>>
>> I expected to have with Pharo a well done, stable multitasking environment, but Pharo hangs everywhere, is leaking lots of memory, is keeping up connections, wasting resources unneccessarily, having problems with internal race conditions on semaphores, mutexes, feels same like "Big Kernel Lock", but even without MultiProcessing.
>
> Only that. Not bad. We are soo dumb that it could be so worse.
>
>> The Pharo Team IMHO is very much missing important knowledge about modern Operating System Design, what Pharo Smalltalk OS is in fact, without being able to fulfill the minimum standards i expect from a usable Smalltalk OS.
>>
>> As system operator or enterprise i cannot offer such a system, that has to be restarted twenty times a day, due to hangs, memory leaks, sucking connection handles, ..., whatever!
>>
>> tnx for your understanding!
>
> My understanding is that you do not know how to communicate.
>
> Now my advice is to try 1.3 because lot of improvements were applied and for example Zinc is a good starting part.
>
>>
>> regards, Guido Stepken
>
>
> --
Janko Mivšek
Aida/Web
Smalltalk Web Application Server
http://www.aidaweb.si

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Re: Hanging connects, exhausted resources, memory leaks, bocked everything ... Unusable!

NorbertHartl
In reply to this post by Guido Stepken

Am 15.07.2011 um 12:39 schrieb Guido Stepken:

> As system operator or enterprise i cannot offer such a system, that has to be restarted twenty times a day, due to hangs, memory leaks, sucking connection handles, ..., whatever!


Sorry, but that made me laugh. And I'm really asking myself if you ever worked in big industries. If you think like this you shouldn't ever dare to, you will asking for nightmares.

couldn't resist,

Norbert


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Re: Hanging connects, exhausted resources, memory leaks, bocked everything ... Unusable!

Sven Van Caekenberghe
In reply to this post by Janko Mivšek

On 15 Jul 2011, at 13:50, Janko Mivšek wrote:

> Before shooting the messenger of bad news let we rather acknowledge that
> there are problems in Squeak/Pharo on the socket/semaphore/process
> field. I also admit, I somewhat lost nervers on Pharo as Guido did and
> I'd like to post the same post. But of course bringing bad messages must
> always be done diplomatically of you won't like to be shoot :)

Janko, you have an excellent Smalltalk reputation and your comments, feedback and contribution are positive. You walk the talk. We take you seriously.

> So, known problems are: socket limit over about 200, semaphores (i
> remember discussion back, is this solved?) protecting critical sections
> doesn't work well, processes?

After our last discussion, I added

        !
        "Extend the external object table to allow for more sockets"
        Smalltalk vmParameterAt: 49 put: 8192.
        !

to my server startup scripts. This should be good for at least around 2000 sockets simulataneously, if I understand things correctly. (Your OS has to allow that many for a single process as well ;-)

Is there a bug report/issue and/or testcase for the critical section problem ?

Regards,

Sven


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Re: Hanging connects, exhausted resources, memory leaks, bocked everything ... Unusable!

Igor Stasenko
In reply to this post by Guido Stepken
On 15 July 2011 12:39, Guido Stepken <[hidden email]> wrote:

> I am doing server tuning, building up fast server systems for a very long time now.
>
> Yesterday i installed 1.2.1, expecting to see a far more matured Pharo Smalltalk, stable, pretty nice new features.
>
> I opened up the Memory Grapher, hmmm.... works fine, watching memory pumping. A bit strange, seeing a Pharo consuming and freeing megabytes of memory space without  any load. But ok!
>
> Then i opened up TestSuites, marked some tests, let them run. Ups! Desktop hanging.
>
> I expected to have with Pharo a well done, stable multitasking environment, but Pharo hangs everywhere, is leaking lots of memory, is keeping up connections, wasting resources unneccessarily, having problems with internal race conditions on semaphores, mutexes, feels same like "Big Kernel Lock", but even without MultiProcessing.
>
> The Pharo Team IMHO is very much missing important knowledge about modern Operating System Design, what Pharo Smalltalk OS is in fact, without being able to fulfill the minimum standards i expect from a usable Smalltalk OS.
>
> As system operator or enterprise i cannot offer such a system, that has to be restarted twenty times a day, due to hangs, memory leaks, sucking connection handles, ..., whatever!
>
> tnx for your understanding!
>
> regards, Guido Stepken
>


From an outsider point of view, your message is ok: "i took a glance
on system and found it inappropriate for my tasks, so i will not use
it".
Fine.

Now, from an insider point of view, your message is worthless, because
it doesn't contains any concrete proposals to make things better (to
your thinking). We would like to improve our system to make it good
enough for people like you. But we need help.
So, every time you saying 'i don't like X', you should also argument
that and propose better solution.
If you not doing that, but instead using vague statements, you just
wasting own and our time. Lets be concrete and constructive.

Pharo is far from perfect. And everyone understands that. You made no
discovery. Now, ask yourself how your message helps
to improve that?

--
Best regards,
Igor Stasenko AKA sig.