Subj : pthread_create() cannot allocate memory with signal handling?
To   : comp.programming.threads
From : kuang_cao
Date : Sun Sep 18 2005 07:55 pm

Hi,

I am working on an application running on Redhat Linux and it uses
pthread for part of the calculation.  There are two processes in the
code, basically one for GUI and one for calculation.  The calculation
process also creates thread to achieve parallel computation.  The GUI
process handles signals from a parallel port.  The calculation process
and the GUI process communicate with each other via socket.

In the code, I only have six threads running at the same time, and they
basically process data simultaneously, once they all finish processing
data, the threads are joined to synchronize them.  But the data comes
in volumes, and for each volume 6 threads are created/joined, and
typically, each run has about 150 volumes.  The program runs ok with
small number of runs, but if I run it continously while having the GUI
process handling signals, it crashes with error code 12 "Cannot
allocate memory" after about 20 runs.  The interesting thing is that it
runs ok even till 35 runs if the GUI process doesn't handle signals.  I
don't know whether there is any conflict between pthreads and signal
handling, but that doesn't make much sense since the threads are
created in calculation process while signal handling happens in GUI
process.

Does anybody have comments or suggestions about this?  Could the
"Cannot allocate memory" error be actually from something else, and
this is just an innocent bystander?  Am I hitting the maximum threads
allowed?  Thanks a lot.

.