Overpass API developpement

[Roland Olbricht <>]

Hi Pierre,

> runtime error: Query failed with the exception: std::bad_alloc
> Is this a bug? Or are they any options I should add to request memory or
> other ressources?

Thank you for reporting the issue. It is essentially a bug from a recent 
change. I've fixed it now. Please try it again.

This is a consequence of a new sanity check. For the curious:
https://github.com/drolbr/Overpass-API/commit/260684bdc7270dd38fecdca649c1eefd3b3ef133

The rationale behind that sanity check is that once every 100 million 
requests or so we had a query that used so much memory that it damaged 
the server operations, i.e. it tried to use 30 GB of RAM. In such a 
situation the operating system kills a process to free memory and it 
doesn't always choose the right one. And before that such a request 
already had steamrolled all the disk cache.

While each of these events is a software bug on its own, I would prefer 
to catch those runaways before they disturb the server operation. So we 
need at least some loose hard limits to detect when a query is 
definitely runaway.

Hence, all queries are now by the operating system limited on allowed 
processor time and memory. It turns out that the limits I expected to be 
loose aren't loose enough. For that reason I've now adjusted the limit from
2 x requested memory + 128 MB
to
2 x requested memory + 1 GB

The time limit has been raised for a similar reason from
2 x requested time + 15 seconds
to
2 x requested time + 60 seconds

Please report if requests still fail. I'm open to raise the limits even 
further if there is good reason to do so.

Best regards,

Roland