Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!mailrus!purdue!bu-cs!bloom-beacon!adam.pika.mit.edu!scs
From: scs@adam.pika.mit.edu (Steve Summit)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Out of Memory problem in Ultrix 2.2
Keywords: out of memory.
Message-ID: <9926@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Date: 18 Mar 89 05:13:16 GMT
References: <3965@ece-csc.UUCP>
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: scs@adam.pika.mit.edu (Steve Summit)
Lines: 18

In article <3965@ece-csc.UUCP> harish@ece-csc.UUCP (Harish Hiriyannaiah) writes:
>One of the processes is hogging (70 %) a lot of memory and the system is 
>definitely thrashing. Now, why should other processes get a "ran out of
>memory" error ? Why should it run out of memory if the os is a virtual memory
>machine ? 

There is no such thing as a free lunch.  Virtual memory is mapped
to disk blocks in swap space; your problem is almost certainly
that you are out of swap space.  (This can definitely be a rude
surprise; I can remember getting "nroff: too big" on a VM machine
and having flashbacks to my pdp11 days...)

Swap space problems are frequent when "worksatations" with
relatively small disks are pressed in to service as timesharing
machines.

                                            Steve Summit
                                            scs@adam.pika.mit.edu