Memory allocation failed

This article is a part of the Troubleshooting collection.

Problem

amdump(8) 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.