Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!pacbell!sorinc!magik
From: magik@sorinc.UUCP (Darrin A. Hyrup)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: AmigaUUCP1.03D Question
Summary: Yes, it must be contiguous.
Keywords: UUCP, Free Memory, contiguous
Message-ID: <9002200659.AA05168@sorinc.UUCP>
Date: 20 Feb 90 07:59:54 GMT
References: <02782.AA02782@wfhami.UUCP>
Reply-To: magik%sorinc@PacBell.COM (Darrin A. Hyrup)
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Lines: 59

In article <02782.AA02782@wfhami.UUCP> bill@wfhami.UUCP (Bill Hogsett) writes:
>    A question has been asked concerning UUCP 1.03D and rnews The question
>was:
>
>TSI@cup.portal.com writes:
>
>>I have installed the binaries from the recent posting of AmigaUUCP 1.03D and h
>>have run into a problem. I have been running an old version of AmigaUUCP for
>>several months with success so have had some experience with it.
>
>>The problem is that when uuxqt runs to process news work files it immediately
>>reports cannot load rnews: insufficient free store. I get this even though I
>>have as much as 800K free. My newsfeed is not in compressed form.
>
>[... text deleted ...]
>
>    I too have seen the problem, and I believe (very sure) the problem is
>that rnews requires a large block of contiguous memory.  I have a 1.5 A1000
>and normally have around 950K to a meg free.  Rnews will not load if there
>is not a contiguous free block of at least 450K (not sure of the exact
>number).  The total amount of free memory needs to be around 950K minimum
>also.  I normally have to reboot to get the required contiguous memory.

Yes, Rnews does require an immense amount of free contiguous memory to
operate. I believe the correct number is around 600K contiguous RAM before
any memory used by the program itself, or any memory needed by the T:
directory (if you keep it assigned to your RAM: disk). So, to be safe, you
usually need at least a 1.5mb machine, and your T: directory assigned to a
HD or floppy. The reason for this is that the Rnews program that is in the
current release allocates a huge array for use in the built-in unbatcher
(and uncompress) routine. Regardless if this is used or not, the memory is
allocated at startup anyway. So, if you only have a 1mb machine, you're
usually out of luck. This restriction will *hopefully* be removed in an
upcoming update. (To date, there has been no work done on the news portion
at all, beyond adding support for some of our config entries, etc. This may
change soon as Matt and I get more spare time to work on it.)

>(Anyone got a sure fire way to clear the fragmented memory?)

Nope. Unless people were to use pointers to pointers in order to keep track
of allocated memory, it would be pretty damn hard to do a fast and workable
memory management routine that can handle relocation of memory blocks and
such to combine the smaller blocks into larger ones. Of course, the current
scheme does allow the system to deallocate RAM being taken up by libraries
and other resources that aren't currently being used, if you do ask for
more memory than is currently available in a contiguous block; but as far
as I know that is the limit of the collection capabilities of the current
OS.

>Bill Hogsett                      CLEVELAND AREA-AMIGA USERS' GROUP (CA-AUG)

Hope this clears things up,

      Darrin Hyrup
--
Darrin A. Hyrup              // AMIGA Enthusiast         rencon!esfenn!dah
magik@sorinc.PacBell.COM   \X/ & Software Developer   pacbell!sorinc!magik
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