Path: utzoo!dciem!nrcaer!sce!cognos!garym From: garym@cognos.uucp@uunet.uu.net (Gary Murphy) Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.programmer Subject: Re: MS-DOS EXEC Question Message-ID: Date: 14 Sep 90 01:59:23 GMT References: <1990Sep7.144359.25202@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> Sender: garym@cognos.UUCP Organization: Cognos Inc., Ottawa, Canada Lines: 25 In-reply-to: mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us's message of 8 Sep 90 23:41:13 GMT On 8 Sep 90 23:41:13 GMT, mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us (Marc Unangst) said: > west@turing.toronto.edu (Tom West) writes: > Does anyone know what the behaviour of the EXEC MS-DOS function is when > there is not enough memory to load COMMAND.COM. > > Specifically, I have a line that is: > > retcode = spawnve(P_WAIT, "C:\COMMAND.COM", path, environ); > [computer locks up when there isn't enough mem to load COMMAND.COM] Marc> This isn't going to help you much, but I've encountered this in Marc> Zenith's MS-DOS v3.21 also. Your best bet might be to check to see if Marc> there's at least 50K left, and refuse to spawn the command processor Marc> if there isn't. There are other alternatives: SIMTEL has several packages which provide a 'swapping' version of spawn to write the spawned-from application to disk and free all but a few K before the spawned-to application runs. -- Gary Murphy uunet!mitel!sce!cognos!garym (garym%cognos.uucp@uunet.uu.net) (613) 738-1338 x5537 Cognos Inc. P.O. Box 9707 Ottawa K1G 3N3 "There are many things which do not concern the process" - Joan of Arc