Memory Snapshot never get done

[warit]

I just purchased your Memory Profiler software, however when I take a memory snapshot of my service, it never get finished. (It said awaiting snapshot for over 15 minutes then I shut it down.)

The service itself uses 32mb ram and c# managed code.

Any clue on this?

[AndrewH]

It sounds like something has failed in the background and ANTS hasn't realised that the snapshot will never complete. With a 32Mb process, ANTS should be able to take a snapshot practically instantaneously. The time required is related to the number of objects in the snapshot, but you'll usually need to be using 100Mb or more before snapshots start to take a noticeable about of time (it's about 9 seconds for 1,000,000 objects making up 250Mb on my system)

Is the problem repeatable? If you restart the application does the snapshot work? (With such a small app you won't need to wait 15 minutes to see if it's working or not)

Is the service responsive while ANTS is claiming to be waiting for a snapshot? (If the snapshot itself has got itself stuck, the process will be stuck somewhere in the garbage collector, so won't respond to requests)

Can you take a snapshot of a standard desktop application without issue? (One of the ANTS demo apps will do).

Is your service running as a restricted user? ANTS should report an error if this is causing a problem; the service needs to be able to write to a folder that the profiler UI can also read from. You could try running the UI as an administrator, or setting the RGTEMP variable to point to a folder that you've created that has the appropriate permissions if there's something wrong here.
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Andrew Hunter
Software Developer
Red Gate Software Ltd.

[warit]

It happens every time I click capture snapshot. Memory profiler just keep on waiting for snapshot. Then I can't even quit it or stop my service.

Other profiler (YourKit Profiler) is working. But I already paid for Redgate's license so I really want to stick to it.

Could it be that there wasn't an option for memory profiler to start my service as an application? (I only use it as an app.)

here's a snapshot with paint exe demo

[warit]

Well, any pointer? T_T

[AndrewH]

Hm, the only thing I can think of from your description is that it's possibly YourKit interfering with ANTS: I haven't tried the latest version, but older versions used to do something that stopped our profiler from working correctly (something to do with the way they implemented attach to process, I think). Does the problem persist if you uninstall YourKit?

We've got some fixes coming up in v7.1 that resolve a couple of situations where snapshots can crash applications that use multiple appdomains or run with DEP turned on, though I don't think these sound like they address your problem. It seems like ANTS is starting a snapshot but it's never finishing (which isn't a way that I've heard of it failing before)
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Andrew Hunter
Software Developer
Red Gate Software Ltd.

[warit]

I had this problem before installing ants though..