Crash in CBinarySerializerScriptImpl (multiplayer match)

[Dan Newman]

The game crashed. I am trying to help by attaching the logs.

[historic_bruno]

Which map were you playing and were there AI players? How many AIs and which ones?

[ben]

In 13429:

Extends binary serializer to support some standard JS classes: Number, String, Boolean. Fixes #406.
Extends binary serializer to support typed arrays.
Extends binary serializer to support custom JS prototype objects in AIs, fixes #407.
Allows full serialization of AIs (not yet implemented). Refs #1089, #1886
Increases binary serializer script backref arena from 8 MB to 16 MB, refs #1842

[Markus]

Fixed with r13429? Closing with "needsinfo"/"fixed"?

[historic_bruno]

Replying to Markus:

Fixed with r13429? Closing with "needsinfo"/"fixed"?

Probably we should wait until A14 is released and then see if anyone reports this problem or if updating to A14 fixes it.

[historic_bruno]

Not fixed, I got this error today with r13758 on a random map, 4 humans vs 4 Aegis bots.

[historic_bruno]

Easy way to reproduce this in single player: use serialization test mode in Atlas, on fast speed and wait a while.

[historic_bruno]

So the problem is the arena allocator used by the binary serializer is failing. In the case of the serialization test, there was a memory leak in libXML2, this case should be fixed by r13817.

There must be a different cause in multiplayer games. We can do two things: 1) switch to a dynamic arena instead of a fixed 16 MB size, so it can start much smaller, 2) look for memory leaks and monitor memory usage during games. (1) is a good idea anyway since simulation messages also get serialized and they really don't need to be allocating 16 MB arenas all the time.

[ben]

In 13866:

Fixes buggy operators and memory leak in Grid class, refs #1842

[ben]

In 13869:

Better fix of Grid memory leak, refs #1842

[historic_bruno]

r13869 should fix a major cause of this error in games against AIs.

[ben]

In 13916:

Adds DynamicArena allocator that grows by fixed chunk size, fixes #2142.
Changes fixed size arenas to new dynamic arenas with reasonable chunk sizes (may require tuning), refs #1842

[wraitii]

Is this still relevant? Pushing to A16 in the meantime.

[historic_bruno]

No sense keeping it open, before it was an indication of the game running out of memory due to memory leaks or fragmentation, but it will be seen less often now that every binary serialization isn't allocating 8+ MB of memory. We should just remember that if someone reports an error like this in the future, it is a likely indication of running out of memory.