malloc error

[quwax]

Hello
SuperDuper! stops copying because of an malloc error:
08:09:15 AM | Error | SDCopy(96507) malloc: *** mmap(size=2097152) failed (error code=12)
| 08:09:15 AM | Error | *** error: can't allocate region
| 08:09:15 AM | Error | *** set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug

the error occured now 2 days in a row.
This is a automatic copy.
any idea?
thanks

[dnanian]

This is due to damage on the source drive. If you have Disk Warrior, use it to repair the source.

[quwax]

Dave,
could you be a bit more specific, what might be broken?
The drive is the starup volume of my server and a SoftRAID drive.
I dont have diskwarrior.

Btw, how can a malloc error be related to an error on the drive?
A malloc error is a problem with an unreleased handle/pointer/object or addressing a pointer which doesn't exist or stuff like that and this has imho nothing to do with the hardware.

thanks
-mat

[dnanian]

Mat,

You didn't give me much information here -- but I never said this was a "hardware" problem. I said you should repair the source drive. (And I know what a malloc error is, really.)

What's going on is that a structure in the file system has a bad/damaged size or invalid structure, typically in its extended attributes (which includes ACLs), and the OS X calls we're using to copy the data are getting confused by that and doing something wrong. The actual failure is pretty deep in the file system copy calls.

Are you running with 10.4.11 server? If so, there are a number of bugs in ACL handling in 10.4.11 that can cause this problem (Apple fixed these issues in Leopard, although in some situations they can still happen, hence the repair request).

But, try turning off the ACL copying checkbox in the Advanced tab of Options.

[quwax]

Dave,
sorry, yes I should have given you more infos ...
So this is a Leopard Server installation (10.5.6), with updated amavis etc, the drive is mirrored with SoftRAID and it says there is no problem. I'll switch the ACL thing off for the moment.
Do you think that DiskWarrior is worth the price and would be able to fix such problems? Reinstalling would be a real pain, as the box is pretty old (G4 dual) and the Apple Software won't be able to fix a SoftRAID drive.
anyway thanks for the info and I was very sure you know what a malloc error is ;-)
all the best
-mat

[dnanian]

In the few other situations we've seen this, Mat, Disk Warrior was able to locate and correct the problem (and Disk Utility wasn't). Of course, I can't guarantee that'll be the case, but it's nearly certain to be a problem with the source drive structure.

Turning off ACL copying might help, if the problem is in an ACL and not some other EA (ACLs are stored as EAs).