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From: johnl@well.UUCP (John A. Limpert)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.xenix
Subject: malloc weirdness on Microport System V/AT
Message-ID: <4299@well.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 25-Oct-87 17:05:15 EST
Article-I.D.: well.4299
Posted: Sun Oct 25 17:05:15 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 27-Oct-87 06:08:17 EST
Lines: 13
Keywords: malloc swapping Microport

I have noticed something odd with malloc on microport.  When I run
a programs that does alot of malloc calls that allocate relatively
small chunks of memory, the program gets swapped to disk at a very
high rate.  This seems to start once a certain amount of memory has
been allocated.  It commonly occurs when I edit large files with
MicroEMACS or when running pathalias.  My machine has about 2.7 MB
but the swapping starts long before the program has used any sizeable
fraction of the total available RAM.  Once the program starts being
swapped it spends 90% of its time being swapped.  I suspect that
something is happening with the allocation of segments and the segment
descriptor tables that causes the swapping.  Is there any way to work
around this problem?  The system will thrash when I edit a 200k file
and I know there is more than enough memory available.