nix search -u seems to have no upper bound on memory consumption

[hyphenrf]

So I tried to update the search cache after updating my channel to get the latest software in the search results, but when running nix search -u the memory consumption kept rising till eventually it was swapping beyond my 4GB ram and eventually bringing the laptop to a halt.

Is there a "proper" way to update the cache that I don't know of? Or is this just how things are?

If it's the former, then the tool itself doesn't make it clear (nix search --help etc..) and if it's the latter, then I expect a warning prompt at least, when running a command that might put my system to a halt.

I'm most likely not using the tool right if it ends up behaving like this, but if it is indeed an improper use why is it the most straightforward option?

[hyphenrf]

Some relevant info: I run nix in

• A non-NixOS context
• A multi-user mode

[hyphenrf]

A hackish way I've found to alleviate this (a little) was to pipe the command to /dev/null, thus avoiding having to load the growing output in a pager.

[SwissLaptop]

same thing happens with

nix-env -i example at least since 19.03, probably earlier

BTW: SysRq+F doesn't work (thanks for disabling by default)

affected version: nixos 20.03.1445.95b9c99f6d0 (plasma5 live dvd)

steps to reproduce:

ulimit -m $[1024*1024] # in KiB nix search example [takes a while, CPU goes to 100%] < GC Warning: Out of memory - trying to allocate requested amount (336 bytes)... [repeated a lot] < GC Warning: Header allocation failed: dropping block < GC Warning: Failed to expand heap by 16777216 bytes < GC Warning: Failed to expand heap by 262144 bytes < GC Warning: Out of Memory! Heap size: 677 MiB. Returning NULL! < error: out of memory

i suggest using that as a test

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I marked this as stale due to inactivity. → More info

[stale[bot]]

I closed this issue due to inactivity. → More info