We have two DEC3000 systems, a -700 and a -900, each configured with 128Mb
and 256Mb primary swap. Two weeks ago we rotated each of these boxes
out for upgrade to DU4.0d. We did fresh installs with oversized custom
system partitions and fresh formatting as part of the install.
After we installed aggregate patch kit duv40das00005-19991007 we started
experiencing spurious errors from Emacs complaining about "Memory
Exhausted". This would happen if we tried to invoke emacs at the shell
prompt on an existing file requires a mode other than "Fundamental". After
this error is given, Emacs stays running, and we can load in the file we
want with the usual C-x,C-f command sequence. The error would manifest
itself consistently using /usr/bin/emacs under CDE and under tty mode.
When we reversed the patch kit and returned the system to baseline, this
error didn't manifest itself. Also when we installed an older aggregate
patch kit, duv40das00003-19981208, this error still didn't manifest itself.
One other observation is that the "Memory Exhausted" error would be
generated very quickly after Emacs executes. When the problem didn't
happen under baseline 4.0d or under the older patch kit, Emacs would take a
normal few seconds to load up the extra mode it needed.
After comparing the two aggregate patch kits, we couldn't find a reason
why duv40das00005-19991007 would cause Emacs to behave this way and
duv40das00003-19981208 would not. We don't think the system is truly out
of memory because an examination shows that under duv40das00005-19991007
there is more available physical and virtual memory.
Can anyone explain why this is happening or what we should do about it?
We would really like to keep duv40das00005-19991007 if we can.
Will summarize. TIA.
--
Douglas C. Stephens | Network/DNS/Unix/WinNT/VMS Administrator
System Support Specialist | Postmaster / Webmaster
Information Systems | Phone: (515) 294-6102
Ames Laboratory, US DOE | Email: stephens_at_ameslab.gov
Received on Tue Nov 23 1999 - 21:25:32 NZDT