smlnj interactive system: fatal error - sml

Question

Getting a strange error on my Crouton chroot on my Chromebook after apt-get install smlnj and attempting to call sml from the terminal, an error that I haven't been able to find anywhere else:
$ sml
/usr/lib/smlnj/bin/sml: Error -- unable to map 1179648 bytes, errno = 1
/usr/lib/smlnj/bin/sml: Fatal error -- unable to allocate memory object for BIBOP
Any guidance?

Answer 1

Edit: This issue (bug #120) was fixed in SML/NJ version 110.77 (release notes) by enabling MAP_ANONYMOUS, which was previously unsupported in Linux. Installing the latest version of SMLNJ would be preferable to the solution below, since it doesn't require weakening the security of the system. If you do continue via modifying the permissions of /dev, it's advisable to remove exec permission after each session.
This problem is primarily reproducible in a Chromium OS environment running ChrUbuntu or Crouton, but may happen to other users in other environments who have a similar problem.
Running strace on sml gives this (attempted) operation before the error output:
open("/dev/zero", O_RDONLY) = 4
mmap2(NULL, 1245184, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE|PROT_EXEC, MAP_PRIVATE, 4, 0) = -1 EPERM (Operation not permitted)
According to the mmap(2) documentation, EPERM indicates that the system is attempting to allocate memory with execute permission in a directory that is marked noexec.
Indeed, mount gives:
...
devtmpfs on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,size=960456k,nr_inodes=240114,mode=755)
...
The solution is thus to remount /dev with exec permission:
$ sudo mount -o remount,exec /dev
$ sml
Standard ML of New Jersey v110.75 [built: Thu May 9 05:41:01 2013]
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