boost serialization binary_oarchive crashes

First I am populating a structure which is quite big and have interrelations. and then I serialize that to a binary archive. Size of that structure depends on what data I feed to the program. I see the program taking ~2GB memory to build the structure which is expected and acceptable.

Then I start serializing the object. and I see program eating RAM while serializing. RAM usage growing till it reaches near 100%. swap usage is still 0 bytes.

and then the Application crashes. with a exception of bad_alloc on new

Why would serialization process take so much RAM and time ? and why would it crash while allocating memory when swap is empty ? the backtrace is too long to be pasted in full.

#0  0xb7fe1424 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
#1  0xb7c6e941 in raise (sig=6) at ../nptl/sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/raise.c:64
#2  0xb7c71e42 in abort () at abort.c:92
#3  0xb7e92055 in __gnu_cxx::__verbose_terminate_handler() () from /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6
#4  0xb7e8ff35 in ?? () from /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6
#5  0xb7e8ff72 in std::terminate() () from /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6
#6  0xb7e900e1 in __cxa_throw () from /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6
#7  0xb7e90677 in operator new(unsigned int) () from /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6
#8  0xb7f00a9f in boost::archive::detail::basic_oarchive_impl::save_pointer(boost::archive::detail::basic_oarchive&, void const*, boost::archive::detail::basic_pointer_oserializer const*) () from /usr/lib/libboost_serialization.so.1.42.0
#9  0xb7effb42 in boost::archive::detail::basic_oarchive::save_pointer(void const*, boost::archive::detail::basic_pointer_oserializer const*) () from /usr/lib/libboost_serialization.so.1.42.0
#10 0x082d052c in void boost::archive::detail::save_pointer_type<boost::archive::binary_oarchive>::non_polymorphic::save<gcl::NestedConnection<gcl::Section, gcl::NestedConnection<gcl::Paragraph, gcl::NestedConnection<gcl::Line, void> > > >(boost::archive::binary_oarchive&, gcl::NestedConnection<gcl::Section, gcl::NestedConnection<gcl::Paragraph, gcl::NestedConnection<gcl::Line, void> > >&) ()
#11 0x082d0472 in void boost::archive::detail::save_pointer_type<boost::archive::binary_oarchive>::save<gcl::NestedConnection<gcl::Section, gcl::NestedConnection<gcl::Paragraph, gcl::NestedConnection<gcl::Line, void> > > >(boost::archive::binary_oarchive&, gcl::NestedConnection<gcl::Section, gcl::NestedConnection<gcl::Paragraph, gcl::NestedConnection<gcl::Line, void> > > const&) ()

.......

#172 0x082a91d8 in boost::archive::detail::interface_oarchive<boost::archive::binary_oarchive>::operator<< <gcl::Collation const> (this=0xbfffe500, t=...) at /usr/include/boost/archive/detail/interface_oarchive.hpp:64
#173 0x082a6298 in boost::archive::detail::interface_oarchive<boost::archive::binary_oarchive>::operator&<gcl::Collation> (this=0xbfffe500, t=...) at /usr/include/boost/archive/detail/interface_oarchive.hpp:72
#174 0x0829bd63 in main (argc=4, argv=0xbffff3f4) at /home/neel/projects/app/main.cpp:93

Program works properly When a smaller data is feeded to it.
Using Linux 64bit with 32bit PAE kernel boost 1.42
program was working without a crash few revision ago. I recently added some more bytes to the structures. may be then it was not reaching the end of RAM and now its reaching.

But why would new crash when there is enough swap ? why would serialization process take so much RAM ?

Solution

I realized that serialization process was taking extra memory, for its own house keeping works. and that was hitting the 3GB Barrier To stop serialization process from taking extra memory I disabled object tracking BOOST_CLASS_TRACKING and that fixed extra memory overhead.