unable to allocate memory for mutex; resize mutex region

[H.-Dirk Schmitt]

After upgrading the server to oneiric sks got stuck with the following error message in db.log:

2012-02-21 13:27:54 Error fetching uid during VIndex for keyid 0xA1630C8F74E0B766: Bdb.DBError("unable to allocate memory for mutex; resize mutex region")

Package version:
sks 1.1.1+dpkgv3-7 oneiric de.archive.ubuntu.com

[H.-Dirk Schmitt (dirk-computer42)]

Some web research:

http://<email address hidden>/msg02171.html
http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.encryption.pgp.sks/2416

It seems to be a problem with libdb5.1. Possible solutionas are
* rebuild with a fresh libdb5.2
* go back to libdb4.7 (as in natty version of this package)

As a temporary workaround I try to use the natty version of this package.
(sks 1.1.1+dpkgv3-6 natty de.archive.ubuntu.com)

[Casey Marshall (cmars)]

Seeing the same thing on 12.04 precise, on a busy SKS server.

[Casey Marshall (cmars)]

I built SKS 1.1.3 from source (not from apt-get source, downloaded direct from code.google.com) with BDB 5.3 (downloaded from oracle.com and compiled) and I got the same error with seven concurrent clients doing /pks/add and queries in a continuous loop.

I built SKS 1.1.3 against BDB 4.7 from sources and after 18 hours running, no mutex errors yet under same load.

[Stefano Rivera (stefanor)]

It seems that this is just a BDB tuning issue, see
http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/sks-devel/2012-06/msg00036.html

[G.C. Hassink (gchassink)]

I discovered this error because I wondered what was causing the software center to crash at its start up and giving a apport crash window (hereafter the software center just started normally).

when I run /usr/bin/software-center the output is among others:
....
MemoryError: (12, 'Onvoldoende geheugen beschikbaar -- unable to allocate memory for mutex; resize mutex region')
.....

[H.-Dirk Schmitt (dirk-computer42)]

gchassink: your commet has nothing to do with the sks package - if needed report it as a new bug against the package software-center