Memory allocation failed
This article is a part of the Troubleshooting collection.
Problem
Amdump includes a message such as
taper: FATAL taper.c@613: memory allocation failed (2147483648 bytes requested)
when the dumptype includes a value of several GB for either tape_splitsize or fallback_splitsize.
Explanation
Amanda uses in-memory buffers for splitting dumps. Even on a system with sufficient RAM installed, a 32-bit processor cannot address more than 2-3GB (depending on operating system) of memory.
Solution
If possible, compile Amanda as a 64-bit application.
Otherwise, reduce your splitsize to something closer to 1GB (again, depending on operating system).
Thanks to Jean-Francois Malouin for asking about this on the Amanda-users mailing list.