Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!killer!davidg
From: davidg@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (David Guntner)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: FacII problem?
Message-ID: <5743@killer.DALLAS.TX.US>
Date: 7 Oct 88 05:47:37 GMT
References: <71727@sun.uucp>
Organization: The Unix(R) Connection, Dallas, Texas
Lines: 39

From article <71727@sun.uucp>, by cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis):
> In article <4653@louie.udel.EDU> Ata@radc-multics.arpa (John G. Ata) writes:
>> Have installed FacII recently on the workbench disk, but while running
>> this software, I noticed a substantial increase in the number of gurus
>> and task held messages.  
 
> This is probably not Facc II, rather it is programs that cannot handle
> low memory situations crashing. One of the biggest problem areas on 
> the Amiga is sloppy programming, and the most common mistake is to not
> check that a malloc or AllocMem returned anything. Because frankly it is
> a pain to follow every alloc with a check for the result. Also on UNIX
> systems with VM malloc fails so rarely that people stop checking the
> result and it never bites them. Not so on the Amiga. Anyway, that is 
> why a lot of people would like to see a simple guard around low memory
> like the Atari has, MemWatch is ok, but hardware protection would be
> nicer. It shouldn't be to tough to build, and would help quite a bit. 
> Anyway, try running MemWatch and see if some of the previously "good"
> programs are now stomping all over low memory.


Provided I understand the problem correctly, I'll venture a posting.... :-)

If you get Gomf, it seems to help this problem as well.  I've had a number
of times where I didn't get a system requestor, but the Gomf requester pops
up out of nowhere after the program in question starts up (I'm also running
FaccII), and indicates that low memory got trashed.  I click the Gomf gadget,
and it announces that the damage to low memory has been repaired, but that
it can't identify the faulty program to remove it as well (there is another
program provided with Gomf that you can run to get rid of the program, if you
want to), which is just as well -- I can then happily go on with what I was
doing with the program.
                          --Dave


-- 
        David Guntner  UUCP: {ames, mit-eddie}!killer!davidg
                       INET: davidg@killer.DALLAS.TX.US
"...Different ship, but she's got a good name.  Treat   --Admiral L. McCoy
 her like a lady, and she'll always bring you home."   "Encounter at Farpoint"