Compiler crash with mongoose.c on Raspberry Pi

[eigenphase]

For the 100st time I am trying to compile on a Raspberry Pi and it always fails after some time with this:

$ cmake --build build
[0/3] Building C object src/CMakeFiles/r_433.dir/mongoose.c.o
[1/3] Building C object src/CMakeFiles/r_433.dir/mongoose.c.o
FAILED: src/CMakeFiles/r_433.dir/mongoose.c.o 
/usr/bin/cc -DGIT_BRANCH=master -DGIT_TIMESTAMP=202511161905 -DGIT_VERSION=25.02-68-g87e7ccb6 -DINSTALL_SYSCONFDIR=/usr/local/etc -DLIBUSB1 -DMG_ENABLE_IPV6=1 -DMG_ENABLE_SSL -DOPENSSL -DRTLSDR -DTHREADS -D_GNU_SOURCE -I/home/niki/rtl_433/include -I/usr/include/libusb-1.0 -O3 -DNDEBUG -std=c99   -Wall -Wextra -Wvla -Wsign-compare -std=c99 -pedantic -Wshadow -Wmissing-prototypes -Wimplicit-fallthrough -Wno-deprecated-declarations -fvisibility=hidden -fanalyzer -fdiagnostics-color=always -w -MD -MT src/CMakeFiles/r_433.dir/mongoose.c.o -MF src/CMakeFiles/r_433.dir/mongoose.c.o.d -o src/CMakeFiles/r_433.dir/mongoose.c.o -c /home/niki/rtl_433/src/mongoose.c
cc: fatal error: Killed signal terminated program cc1
compilation terminated.
ninja: build stopped: subcommand failed.

[zuckschwerdt]

That's a compiler crash not a rtl_433 bug. Maybe OOM or something like that.

[eigenphase]

Yes, indeed it's OOM.

[11453.892732] oom-kill:constraint=CONSTRAINT_NONE,nodemask=(null),global_oom,task_memcg=/,task=cc1,pid=24268,uid=1000
[11453.892863] Out of memory: Killed process 24268 (cc1) total-vm:674832kB, anon-rss:229572kB, file-rss:1616kB, shmem-rss:0kB, UID:1000 pgtables:668kB oom_score_adj:0

But I have nothing else running, 512MB RAM and 512MB swap.

How can I make it compile?

PS: Calling /usr/bin/cc -DGIT_BRANCH=master -DGIT_TIMESTAMP=202511161905 -DGIT_VERSION=25.02-68-g87e7ccb6 -DINSTALL_SYSCONFDIR=/usr/local/etc -DLIBUSB1 -DMG_ENABLE_IPV6=1 -DMG_ENABLE_SSL -DOPENSSL -DRTLSDR -DTHREADS -D_GNU_SOURCE -I/home/niki/rtl_433/include -I/usr/include/libusb-1.0 -O3 -DNDEBUG -std=c99 -Wall -Wextra -Wvla -Wsign-compare -std=c99 -pedantic -Wshadow -Wmissing-prototypes -Wimplicit-fallthrough -Wno-deprecated-declarations -fvisibility=hidden -fanalyzer -fdiagnostics-color=always -w -MD -MT src/CMakeFiles/r_433.dir/mongoose.c.o -MF src/CMakeFiles/r_433.dir/mongoose.c.o.d -o src/CMakeFiles/r_433.dir/mongoose.c.o -c /home/niki/rtl_433/src/mongoose.c manually
PS: Can't compile it from a different system (easily) since I need the binaries for this old Raspberry Pi...

PS3: I added 4GB swap file. Not good because it's uSD card but at least no oom kill for now. Running over an hour now...

[gdt]

Lots of options:

• add even more swap, like another 2 GB
• build without the optimizer, not passing -O to that build line
• cross-build on a computer with more memory
• get a bigger RPI
• analyze the mongoose code and find what is making gcc use memory and improve it upstream and then ask rtl_433 to adapt
• improve gcc

The first two are likely the easiest. But you are baiscally arriving at "the computer I am using is too small to deal with the software I aant to use".

[eigenphase]

Thanks.
I was able to make it work with temporary swap.
Ran the whole night.

@zuckschwerdt would be useful to add a remark to the building document that building may fail due to oom with 512MB or less. just as a suggestion.

[zuckschwerdt]

Could be interesting to measure peak memory requirements for GCC and Clang. There is -fmem-report for GCC, but generally I guess something like valgrind is needed.
I'd say rtl_433 is rather lean and I glanced about 60MB needed for mongoose.c with default options. How much free memory did you have when starting to compile?

[gdt]

I lean to not giving speciai instructions about 512M computers. As much as I grew up on tiny RAM, and like retrocomputing, I don't feel that rtl_433 is particularly piggy, and that while you are having trouble, I suspect you'd have trouble with almost anything else you built.

FWIW, I build rtl_433 routinely on a 1GB RPI3 (running earmv7hf-el, as 32-bit ARM), and I didn't run into problems. But that's headless, with no desktop running.

[mwaterbu]

I am running into the same error on my Pi Zero W, it keeps running out of memory when building mongoose.c
@eigenphase what swap method are you using? I am trying to use the new rpi-swap which is a hybrid zram+file by default, but even after increasing the size, I am still running out of memory.

[kami83]

hi i get this message with the nightly build:
./rtl_433
-bash: ./rtl_433: cannot execute: required file not found

ldd rtl_433
the program is not dynamic linked

[zuckschwerdt]

If you use file rtl_433 or readelf -l rtl_433 | grep Request you should see that /lib/ld-linux.so.3 is needed -- is that not installed? What does ls -al /lib/ld-* show?
Or the other way around, what does your self-compiled version show with ldd rtl_433?
(and just to be sure, uname -m (or -a) shows armv6, right?)

[kami83]

hi first your file then my file:
file rtl_433
rtl_433: ELF 32-bit LSB pie executable, ARM, EABI5 version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib/ld-linux.so.3, B uildID[sha1]=ce6ce630bd0d7965db83ce425585496c5420fa72, for GNU/Linux 3.2.0, not stripped

file /usr/local/bin/rtl_433
/usr/local/bin/rtl_433: ELF 64-bit LSB pie executable, ARM aarch64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib /ld-linux-aarch64.so.1, BuildID[sha1]=2c712d4572b793c8b29f69a360cbb7c76a955601, for GNU/Linux 3.7.0, not stripped

i am on 64-bit :) Sorry. Haven't seen this.

[zuckschwerdt]

Might not be a "PI Zero W" then, the ARMv6 is 32-bit only.

[kami83]

you are right it is a Pi Zero 2W. Sorry for not mention this :(