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From: ams@gauss.Princeton.EDU (Andrew Simms)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mips
Subject: Mips m/120 no more processes/unable to allocate xxx errors
Keywords: no more processes memory errors.
Message-ID: <11637@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 19 Nov 89 21:38:10 GMT
Sender: news@phoenix.Princeton.EDU
Reply-To: ams@acm.Princeton.EDU (Andrew Simms)
Followup-To: comp.sys.mips
Organization: Princeton University
Lines: 40

A few weeks back I posted an ariticle about a problem with memory
usage I was seeing on my m/120 system (16MB).  The problem was an
erroneous "No more processes" error that occurred during periods
of light to moderate use.  

I believe I have isolated the problem.  On some tips from customer
support at MIPs they suggested the real cause was probably running
out of memory.  Several net people suggested a similar cause.  
Well, you were all correct, but there may be an interesting cause behind
the memory problems.  

I currenty have 7 NCD Xwindow display stations who run xdm and the gwm
window manager package off the m/120.  I installed gwm a while ago 
when we had 3 Xterminals and we never saw a problem.  The no more processes
errors showed up with the additional terminals.  Closer examination of
the gwm executable showed it was revealed that it was 

/usr/local/bin/X11/gwm: mipseb demand paged stripped - version 2.0

According to the ld man page, to make an executable's text portion shared,
you link with the -n option, yielding this from file:

/usr/local/bin/X11/gwm: mipseb pure stripped - version 2.0

The problem seemed to disappear after relinking gwm, but I will not be
convinced that I really fixed anything for a while.  In the mean time,
could someone comment on -n linker option and whether or not a file
can be both demand paged and pure?  According to /etc/magic, the 68K 
seems to have such a combination.

Thanks in advance.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

  Andrew Simms					ams@acm.princeton.edu
  System Administrator
  Program in Applied and Computational Math
  Princeton University
  Princeton, NJ   08544
  609/258-5324 or 609/258-6227
  609/258-1054 (fax)