[Numpy-discussion] MemoryError in numpy.test() on AIX installation

[Whitcomb, Mr. Tim]

I'm trying to install NumPy 1.3.0 on an IBM Power6.  I can build and
install successfully, but when I try to execute the unit test suite it
crashes with a MemoryError (with no additional information on the error
- just the traceback).  The failure occurs in test_roundtrip in
numpy/lib/tests/test_format.py and the following snippet reproduces the
error:

----------------------------------
import numpy as np
from cStringIO import StringIO
from numpy.lib import format

f = StringIO()
a = np.array([], dtype='object')
format.write_array(f, a)
f2 = StringIO(f.getvalue())
a2 = format.read_array(f2)

print('%s %s' % (a, a2))
-----------------------------------

On the AIX/PPC install, this crashes with:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "crash_numpy.py", line 10, in <module>
    a2  = format.read_array(f2)
  File
"$HOME/.local/python/lib/python2.5/site-packages/numpy/lib/format.py",
line 362, in read_array
    array = cPickle.load(fp)
MemoryError

Trying this same bit of code on my Linux and Windows install seems to
work just fine, and other tests using empty arrays but different dtypes
work on all platforms. 

To further complicate issues, I do not have sysadmin rights on the
machine in question, and I'm not entirely confident that Python itself
was built properly (I've had to sort out some other issues as well).
The version in use is:
Python 2.5.2 (r252:60911, Sep 17 2008, 13:24:29) [C] on aix5

I'm new to AIX, Python, and Numpy so I'm trying to learn a lot very
quickly.  Any ideas for what could be causing this error?  Any pointers
on where I can look to get some more information to diagnose the
problem?  I'd be happy to provide any more data I can.

Thanks,
Tim
[w]