Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!uunet!ginosko!ctrsol!cica!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!att!cbnews!res
From: res@cbnews.ATT.COM (Robert E. Stampfli)
Newsgroups: unix-pc.general
Subject: Re: Large programs core dumping upon execution
Message-ID: <8679@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 29 Jul 89 20:21:34 GMT
References: <211@comhex.UUCP>
Reply-To: res@cbnews.ATT.COM (Robert E. Stampfli)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 41

In article <211@comhex.UUCP> sysop@comhex.UUCP (Joe E. Powell) writes:
>Has anyone else ever noticed that very large (over 300K) files
>sometimes tend to core dump when they are invoked?  They usually
>work fine, but every now and again, the program will just refuse
>to start up.  Is it just me or have other people had this happen?
>
>I've noticed this occasionally on nethack and moria, but more
>often with gcc (esp gcc 1.35).
>
>I'm running 3.51a, with a 40 MB drive and 2.5 MB of RAM.
>
>--
>Joe E. Powell
>unf7!comhex!sysop@bikini.cis.ufl.edu

Yes, I have noticed this also with gcc 1.35.  

We recently added more memory to one of our machines (a 2-meg expansion
card), making our configuration remarkably similar to yours: 2.5 meg ram
(.5 on motherboard, 2.0 on expansion) 40 meg disk, 3.51 (not "a" revision).
We have a serial card, also.  Now, all of a sudden, I notice that
gcc-1.35 dumps core more than half of the time, but when it doesn't, it
works fine.  This is when I run it from the tty002 line connected to my
terminal.  Now the kicker:  When I run gcc from the console, it *always*
works.  My hypothesis up to this point, without looking at the problem in
detail, was that there is probably some interaction with the number of bytes
of exported variables on the stack, perhaps a bug in gcc that caused it to
use more stack than was allocated.  This would explain it working sometimes
and not others, but after your posting I am less convinced it is a gcc problem.

I am curious: Do you run gcc from the console or a tty line.  If so, which
tty (before the upgrade, my tty was on tty001, and it worked fine from there,
although I have not had the opportunity to recable and try it since).
Also, is your machine a .5/2.0 configuration?  BTW, the memory card is an
upgraded .5 meg card which was run thru numerous passes of the diagnostics
without a glitch.  I forget the signal number, but gcc dies with a
segmentation fault, which is unlikely to be due to a hardware problem.

Rob Stampfli
att!cbnews!res (work)
osu-cis!n8emr!kd8wk!res (home)