Hi,

I'm trying to render a massively large data set with povray 3.6 for linux.
The dataset comes as a povray export from Ensight. The file size is around
500MB (for starters, I need to render a 2.5GB dataset too)

Anyway, povray fails suspiciously on this input file.  It parses tokens for
about 13 minutes, and then exits gracefully without rendering anything. It
reaches around 135 million tokens parsed, stalls, then exits. No image file
is written, no core is dumped. Stats listed show 0 minutes 0 seconds for
parse time but 13+ minutes for render time (in spite of the fact that it
was ALL parsing and NO rendering). No errors are reported at all. It just
quits, silently.

Is there a limit to how big the .pov file can be? (it does render an image
successfully on a smaller data set, also exported by ensight) Actually, I
broke the Ensight export into smaller files since I needed to edit them and
no text editor would accept a file that big.  So I split the file into
segments, and then included them in a parent pov file. ie:

#version 3.5;

#include "test2_aa"
#include "test2_ab"
#include "test2_ac"
#include "test2_ad"
#include "test2_ae"
#include "test2_af"
#include "test2_ag"
#include "test2_ah"
#include "test2_ai"
#include "test2_aj"
#include "test2_ak"
#include "test2_al"
#include "test2_am"

where each "test2_xx" file is a split of the original pov file.

So whats going on here?  I originally thought the machine I was using ran
out of memory, but now I'm running on a machine with 28GB of RAM, so thats
not the issue. Is there simply a limit on how large the input file can be?
Or is this include file scheme flawed somehow?

Any ideas? I'm really stuck up a creek here.

Thanks.

Post a reply to this message

I should add that when I attempted to run this dataset on povray 3.6 for
Windows, it also failed, but did report an 'out of memory' error while
parsing.

That's what prompted me to seek the heavier duty linux environment with lots
of memory headroom.

Post a reply to this message

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space_cadet wrote:
> So whats going on here?  I originally thought the machine I was using ran
> out of memory, but now I'm running on a machine with 28GB of RAM, so thats
> not the issue. Is there simply a limit on how large the input file can be?
> Or is this include file scheme flawed somehow?
> 
> Any ideas? I'm really stuck up a creek here.
> 
	If you have 28GB of RAM, I'll assume that you have a 64bits CPU
(since 32bits CPU are limited to 4GB). *But* do you also have a
64bits version of linux? If you don't, any application you run will
be limited to either 2 or 3GB (depending on some kernel options) no
matter how much physical RAM/swap are available...

		Jerome
- --
+------------------------- Jerome M. BERGER ---------------------+
|    mailto:jeb### [at] freefr      | ICQ:    238062172            |
|    http://jeberger.free.fr/     | Jabber: jeb### [at] jabberfr   |
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Post a reply to this message

> >
>  If you have 28GB of RAM, I'll assume that you have a 64bits CPU
> (since 32bits CPU are limited to 4GB). *But* do you also have a
> 64bits version of linux? If you don't, any application you run will
> be limited to either 2 or 3GB (depending on some kernel options) no
> matter how much physical RAM/swap are available...
>
>   Jerome
***************************

Thanks for responding.

Yes, the machine I'm rendering on is:


2 processors in one small chassis

Although even if memory was restricted to 2 or 3GB as in your hypothetical,
I would think a 500MB dataset wouldnt overflow that.  But anyway, all
64-bit here.

Any other ideas? :-(

Post a reply to this message

space_cadet nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 03/05/2006 17:06:
>> If you have 28GB of RAM, I'll assume that you have a 64bits CPU
>>(since 32bits CPU are limited to 4GB). *But* do you also have a
>>64bits version of linux? If you don't, any application you run will
>>be limited to either 2 or 3GB (depending on some kernel options) no
>>matter how much physical RAM/swap are available...
>>
>>  Jerome
> 
> ***************************
> 
> Thanks for responding.
> 
> Yes, the machine I'm rendering on is:


> 2 processors in one small chassis
> 
> Although even if memory was restricted to 2 or 3GB as in your hypothetical,
> I would think a 500MB dataset wouldnt overflow that.  But anyway, all
> 64-bit here.
> 
> Any other ideas? :-(
> 
> 
> 
> 
Using the 64 bits version of POV-Ray? Probably yes, but just to make sure.

-- 
Alain
-------------------------------------------------
A day for firm decisions!!!!!  Or is it?

Post a reply to this message

Alain <ele### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
> >
> >
> Using the 64 bits version of POV-Ray? Probably yes, but just to make sure.
>
> --
> Alain


Well, thats actually a good question. I see only one linux version available
(povlinux-3.6.tgz). That's what I'm using.  I'm not able to find anywhere
online here if thats 32 bit or 64 bit.

Although, I would imagine if only one version is available, it would
probably be 32bit.  So is that the issue?  But again, if that limits memory
to 2 or 3 GB, 500 MB file shouldnt be a problem, no?

(ps,  anyone when 3.7 will be available for linux?  That shared memory
feature would come in REAL handy!!)

Post a reply to this message

space_cadet wrote:
> Alain <ele### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
> 
>>>
>>Using the 64 bits version of POV-Ray? Probably yes, but just to make sure.
>>
>>--
>>Alain
> 
> 
> 
> Well, thats actually a good question. I see only one linux version available
> (povlinux-3.6.tgz). That's what I'm using.  I'm not able to find anywhere
> online here if thats 32 bit or 64 bit.
> 
> Although, I would imagine if only one version is available, it would
> probably be 32bit.  So is that the issue?  But again, if that limits memory
> to 2 or 3 GB, 500 MB file shouldnt be a problem, no?
> 
> (ps,  anyone when 3.7 will be available for linux?  That shared memory
> feature would come in REAL handy!!)
> 
> 
why do I hear the start of a home build?

stephen

Post a reply to this message

> Well, thats actually a good question.

	It is important to run a 64-bit POV-Ray on your 64-bit machine/OS.
Otherwise you won't be able to get full use of the large installed RAM.

I see only one linux version available
> (povlinux-3.6.tgz). That's what I'm using.  I'm not able to find anywhere
> online here if thats 32 bit or 64 bit.

	The distribution you are referring to provides a 32-bit POV-Ray binary
that is meant to run on all x86 platforms (at least Pentium-compatible).  As of
today there's no official 64-bit POV-Ray for Linux binary.
	However you have two possibilities:

1) get the source distro of POV-Ray for Unix and "configure && make install"
2) get the 64-bit PC-Linux distribution of MegaPOV

> Although, I would imagine if only one version is available, it would
> probably be 32bit.  So is that the issue?

	This might well be the issue, indeed.  Another one is that there is
some weirdness about memory allocation under Linux in general.  Although
POV-Ray for Linux, as WinPOV, always checks whether it can allocate memory
or not, it seems there is no chance for the software to report when it
cannot allocate memory under Linux: it just gets killed by the OS instead.
I've been experiencing such an odd behaviour for quite some time with other
applications as well, so I believe this is not a problem specific to POV
for Linux.  Yet this will be investigated.

But again, if that limits memory
> to 2 or 3 GB, 500 MB file shouldnt be a problem, no?

	You are confusing two completely different things: the scene file size
has in general nothing to do with how much memory POV-Ray will need to allocate
for it.  For instance you can have a small scene file that generates billions
of objects by using loop constructs.

> (ps,  anyone when 3.7 will be available for linux?

	There will be none.  Linux is Evil.  (WARNING: joke inside)

	- NC

Post a reply to this message

Nicolas Calimet wrote:
> 1) get the source distro of POV-Ray for Unix and "configure && make 
> install"
> 2) get the 64-bit PC-Linux distribution of MegaPOV

You distribute an Itanium binary of MegaPOV? Are you sure? He said he has an 
Itanium system...

	Thorsten

Post a reply to this message

>> 1) get the source distro of POV-Ray for Unix and "configure && make install"
>> 2) get the 64-bit PC-Linux distribution of MegaPOV
> 
> You distribute an Itanium binary of MegaPOV? Are you sure? He said he 
> has an Itanium system...
> 
>     Thorsten

     Ah, right, while writing I forgot it was for the Itanium 2 -- I kinda got
flooded by all those (R) and (TM) symbols in the relevant message   ;-)

     As mentioned on the MegaPOV download page, the 64-bit PC-Linux binary
prepared by the MegaPOV maintainers is meant to run on the AMD64 (and most
likely Intel EM64T as well), i.e. x86-64 platforms.  I believe this binary
won't run on the Itanium (i.e. IA-64 platforms) although I can't test either.

     So point 2) above is not valid.  Point 1) still is.
     Thanks for pointing this out.

     - NC

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