2009.10.19 11:05 "Re: [Tiff] Limit to the number of files loadable in LibTiff", by John

2009/10/19 Simon R. Proud <Srp@geo.ku.dk>:

Hi, I am using libtiff on a linux system (OpenSuSE 11) to open a very large number of files.

I notice that if I open more than about 210 files I receive some unexpected errors from LibTiff: "TIFFWriteBufferSetup: [filename]: No space for output buffer

I suspect it is some kind of limit within LibTiff, so is there any way to overcome this? I really would like to load more than 210 files at once (I need about 250-300), so if there's a method of changing the limit it would be superb to know!

Looking at the source, the message is generated if TIFFSetupStrips(tif) fails. This in turn fails if _TIFFmalloc() fails. So it sounds like you are running out of memory. I would try watching your program with "top" as it runs and see how large the RSIZE column gets.

Perhaps you can alter your program to use less RAM?

John