SmartHeap? What on earth is this thing?

Since I updated my main viewer I keep getting this idiotic SmartHeap pop up thing...usually at the end of the week. It just says "Out of memory. Please free some memory then press retry." Does it mean delete stuff from inventory? What the heck does it mean?

I've been busy chucking out old freebies and lots of stuff I don't need but I'm still getting it.

Any genuine techie people out there who can help please? It drives me crackers with its mindless "doink" noise.

You probably have a multi-core processor set up. Smartheap is a utility that manages the use of the cores. If you have Windows XP you could try and download Service Pack 2 - that might fix it.

If it is happening once per week, at the weekend, it is probably happening when a routine weekly task (like a virus scan) kicks in.

Your inventory has nothing to do with it. Inventory is on the server. The SmartHeap refers to the RAM in your personal computer.

What's happening is a memory leak...the SL viewer software is using memory, and then not giving it back when it's done. Over time, more and more memory gets used, until you get the SmartHeap or Stack Collision or Out of Memory error message and a crash.

They tend to happen at times of higher concurrency...why, I'm not entirely sure. But since weekends are times when there are a lot of users in world, it could explain why they happen to you then.

If you are using the standard viewer, 1.19.1.(4), I've found that Nicholaz Beresford's patch does wonders for fixing memory leak errors, as well as delayed teleports and tp crashes. Go to http://www.blueflash.cc/users/nicholaz/EyeCandy/ and download EC-e.zip. Unzip its files into your Secondlife directory. Create a new shortcut to the file nicholaz.exe.

You can still run the "normal" viewer from your original shortcut. The new shortcut will run it as the patched version.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-6389

There's another SmartHeap error as well....

This is MicroQuill's (the makers of SmartHeap) website:

http://www.microquill.com/

It's basically a third-party dynamic memory runtime management system (well, someone above _did_ ask for a techie answer ) - a place to start looking around to see what one of _those_ might be is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_memory_allocation .

But, the short version - many non-trivial C/C++ programs (like the SL viewer) have to deal with the manual allocation from and return to the operating system of memory (let's say RAM, to keep things simple). There's a generic subsystem available for this available from the compiler/os vendor (on Windows, those are both the same company, usually - Microsoft) to handle the nitty gritty details of such. And for many purposes the generic one is just fine. But it often isn't - and for those cases, the generic runtime memory management system can be swapped out for a more sophisticated one. SmartHeap is a very popular alternative to the generic in this case.

The errors you are seeing are error messages from the SmartHeap libraries - the messages may result from the library being used incorrectly, or from an incompatibility between the library and some flavor of Windows (OS version and/or service pack), or may be a bug in the library that is only surfacing under some extreme conditions. We'll likely never find out which of these was the case (the three parties mentioned will often wind up pointing fingers at each other ).

However, the fact that the error message is visible is actually a good thing, IMO. It means that LL isn't supressing error reporting (which is easy to do with the SmartHeap library) - so, yes, it's a pain to see it, but the fact that it's there means that they've likely had 'tell me if there are problems' turned on for a while, which means that this is probably relatively new, and that they are inclined to find out what the problem might be and get it resolved.

Edit: I just saw this: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Viewer_Memory_Manager

It looks like LL is looking into replacing SmartHeap with something open source - I wish them luck (and would be very interested in discovering what they eventually pick, if they do).

I hope this helped...

Second Life's poor memory management is something that needs to be fixed.

I got the SmartHeap error a lot when the new viewer came out, but before I installed a new operating system on my computer.

(I installed Windows XP Home edition on my dual-core computer last year, not realizing that the Home edition did not support dual-core machines. A couple of weeks ago, I installed Windows XP Professional, which does support dual core.)

I haven't had the SmartHeap error since installing a different operating system.

I'm not a particularly technically inclined person, but I've weathered through enough computer problems that I feel like I can guess at few things.

I assume that essentially upgrading from one to two processors actually had something to do with the disappearance of those SmartHeap errors I was getting. That may not be the case.

1) If you have an older computer, it could be that that the increased resource strain of the new SL viewer was enough to be the straw to "break the camels back" when it comes to your processor or memory speed.

2) Updating your chipset driver is a possible, maybe-or-maybe-not help to the problem. Hardware drivers are updated all the time to respond to new problems that game software introduces. Perhaps it's a problem fixable by a driver update. No harm in trying.

3) Allocating some more virutal memory could be a band-aid to the problem. If I remember correctly, doesn't the SmartHeap error have something to do with multiple pieces of data competing for the same memory address, whether it's because the computer has mistakenly attempted to assign them to the same address, or you've just run out of memory? Maybe more memory to play with means less memory "collisions." The downside of using more virtual memory you make available to SL, the more it will hungrily use, and virtual memory is much, much slower in performance compared to RAM. However, if I recall, the SmartHeap error is an immediate crash type of thing. At least if you solve the problem with virtual memory, you won't have sudden crashes. You'll just have to re-log whenever you hear your hard-drive hit crunching constantly.

I wouldn't begin to speculate on the 'cause' - there are just too many variables.

A thorough instrumentation of the viewer code with a tool such as Compuware/NuMega's BoundsChecker http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BoundsChecker would probably find a lot of memory-related problems... and eliminating those might well eliminate the SmartHeap problem (no guarantees ). That's not something that you could do at home (unless you're building the viewer from source and have access to fancy tools) - but I certainly hope that LL is doing something like that (or perhaps they are not and Nicholaz is... which might help explain a few things ).

Good luck, everyone

I get this too. I'm using the standard viewer (not the release candidate) on a system with a Q6600, Vista 64, 4G RAM, and nVidia 8800 ULtra. I can't run the release candidate without corrupting my video driver. Now that I'm crashing four times a night with SmartHeap errors, I'm thinking maybe I should try Nicholaz, but I don't want to go through the nightmare of corrupted video drivers again. Is there anything else I can try?

Fear not the Nicholaz.

Does OnRez still live?

So glad I found this thread! I was experiencing the SmartHeap errors every 2 to 3 hours and required a reboot to relaunch SL. After installing Nicholaz I've been stable... well, my computer has at any rate...

System
Vista 64
Q6600
4GB RAM
8800 GT


Li

Out of Memory in Smartheap Library errors
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-3943

SmartHeap Library error msgs immediately after log-in or on exit--viewer sometimes disappears from Windows, without error msg, immediately after log-in
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-6389

memory leaks come slower if you decrease your view range.

The OnRez viewer is still available and usable; the most recent version is based on 1.18.5.3. Development does not seem to be active at this time; that will likely change if the Electric Sheep Company launches another large build. The current OnRez viewer will probably stop working somewhere down the road.