Hello,

In the course of copying a largish (20 GB) database file while
accessing it via sqlite3, the machine became very unresponsive. I
opened task manager and found that the system was using a huge amount
of virtual memory, causing it to thrash. Per-process memory usage
looked normal and did not add up to anywhere near system-wide VM
usage.

I ran into this issue at a customer site and was able to reproduce it
using a local Windows 2008 installation. I have not installed any
backup software or a virus scanner. Storage is local disk, SQLite
version is 3.3.17.

At first I thought that this was a general Windows problem involving a
process accessing a file that is being copied, but other binaries I
tested do not cause the same behavior that sqlite3 does. I performed
the following experiments to try to diagnose the issue.

Case 1:

* I copy a 20 GB sqlite DB using Windows' own copy utility (e.g. via explorer).
* At any point during the copy, I open the file being copied in sqlite3
* I exit sqlite3.
* During the rest of the copy the OS will consume virtual memory
linear (seemingly identical) to the amount of data copied since the
process opened the file.

I repeated this experiment using a similarly-sized file created from
/dev/zero (i.e. an invalid DB) and the results were the same.

Case 2:

* I copy the sqlite DB using Windows' own copy utility (e.g. via explorer).
* At any point during the copy, I run 'strings' with the file as an argument.
* I exit strings.
* The copy does not result in the OS consuming additional virtual memory.

Case 3:

* I open the DB in sqlite3
* I let sqlite3 idle and do not input any commands.
* I copy a sqlite DB using Windows' own copy utility (e.g. via explorer).
* I continue to let sqlite3 idle and do not input any commands.
* During the rest of the copy the OS will consume virtual memory
linear (seemingly identical) to the amount of data copied since the
process opened the file.

Is there a workaround for this issue? Any assistance or info is appreciated.

Thanks,
-Stan
_______________________________________________
sqlite-users mailing list
sqlite-users@sqlite.org
http://sqlite.org:8080/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sqlite-users

Reply via email to