Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cmcl2!sbcs!eeserv1.ic.sunysb.edu!cfreas
From: cfreas@eeserv1.ic.sunysb.edu (Terry Freas)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.misc
Subject: Re: Memory problems
Message-ID: <1991Jan11.035507.10985@sbcs.sunysb.edu>
Date: 11 Jan 91 03:55:07 GMT
References: <4951@lure.latrobe.edu.au>
Sender: usenet@sbcs.sunysb.edu (Usenet poster)
Organization: State University of New York at Stony Brook
Lines: 26

In article <4951@lure.latrobe.edu.au> CCMK@lure.latrobe.edu.au (Mark Kosten - Computer Centre, La Trobe Uni.) writes:
>I am running version 1.20 on an IBM model 70 with 6MB memory
>and with memory swapping and compaction on in config.sys.
>I run a lot of stuff in the background (DECnet, TCP/IP,
>clock, cpu monitor, etc, totalling 59 processes), and after
>boot up have 1.2MB free (a little utility tells me this).
>I run a few programs repeatedly (quitting and restarting, such
>as the file manager, editor) and slowly memory gets eaten up
>till there is about 20 KB left and then sometimes I get a system
>shutdown with 'memory faulty' error, which I do not believe as
>no tests or other programs have ever found faulty memory.
>
>Does anyone have any ideas?  It seems some programs do not
>give back memory, such as the file manager, on exiting,
>plus my machine seems loathe to swap or compact segments.
>Am I dreaming the whole thing, or should I just wait for 1.3,
>which apparently solves a lot of memory problems?

Your 'mem free' utility probably is using the standard DosXXX call
for the *largest* block of free ram.  After a good deal of memory
usage, fragmentation is reasonable.  Try using a nice little program
called freemem written by Metz.  A feature causes it (every interval)
to allocate all free blocks of ram until swapping would occur, and
then free it.  It then reports your total free ram.
-- 
Jeremy Wohl / wohl@max.physics.sunysb.edu / cfreas@csserv1.ic.sunysb.edu