scp: Write Failed: Cannot allocate memory

[jhell]

On Fri, Jul 01, 2011 at 03:22:32PM -0700, Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 01, 2011 at 03:13:17PM -0400, Scott Sipe wrote:
> > I'm running 8.2-RELEASE and am having new problems with scp. When scping
> > files to a ZFS directory on the FreeBSD server -- most notably large files
> > -- the transfer frequently dies after just a few seconds. In my last test, I
> > tried to scp an 800mb file to the FreeBSD system and the transfer died after
> > 200mb. It completely copied the next 4 times I tried, and then died again on
> > the next attempt.
> > 
> > On the client side:
> > 
> > "Connection to home closed by remote host.
> > lost connection"
> > 
> > In /var/log/auth.log:
> > 
> > Jul  1 14:54:42 freebsd sshd[18955]: fatal: Write failed: Cannot allocate
> > memory
> > 
> > I've never seen this before and have used scp before to transfer large files
> > without problems. This computer has been used in production for months and
> > has a current uptime of 36 days. I have not been able to notice any problems
> > copying files to the server via samba or netatalk, or any problems in
> > apache.
> > 
> > Uname:
> > 
> > FreeBSD xeon 8.2-RELEASE FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE #0: Sat Feb 19 01:02:54 EST
> > 2011     root at xeon:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  amd64
> > 
> > I've attached my dmesg and output of vmstat -z.
> > 
> > I have not restarted the sshd daemon or rebooted the computer.
> > 
> > Am glad to provide any other information or test anything else.
> >
> > {snip vmstat -z and dmesg}
> 
> You didn't provide details about your networking setup (rc.conf,
> ifconfig -a, etc.).  netstat -m would be useful too.
> 
> Next, please see this thread circa September 2010, titled "Network
> memory allocation failures":
> 
> http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/2010-September/thread.html#58708
> 
> The user in that thread is using rsync, which relies on scp by default.
> I believe this problem is similar, if not identical, to yours.
> 

Please also provide your output of ( /usr/bin/limits -a ) for the server
end and the client.

I am not quite sure I agree with the need for ifconfig -a but some
information about the networking driver your using for the interface
would be helpful, uptime of the boxes. And configuration of the pool.
e.g. ( zpool status -a ;zfs get all <poolname> ) You should probably
prop this information up somewhere so you can reference by URL whenever
needed.

rsync(1) does not rely on scp(1) whatsoever but rsync(1) can be made to
use ssh(1) instead of rsh(1) and I believe that is what Jeremy is
stating here but correct me if I am wrong. It does use ssh(1) by
default.

Its a possiblity as well that if using tmpfs(5) or mdmfs(8) for /tmp
type filesystems that rsync(1) may be just filling up your temp ram area
and causing the connection abort which would be expected. ( df -h ) would
help here.
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