[tlug] Odd mmap() problem.

[Jim Breen <Jim.Breen@example.com>]

Only distantly related to Linux and Japanese, but very Unixy.

My WWWJDIC server is barfing reporting "Out of space" (via strerror) as
it fails an mmap() call. It occurs in the following situation:

- just for one user (Michael) living in Nagoya;
- it only happens on the Monash (Solaris) server. None of the mirrors (Linux
and AIX) show the problem;
- it only happens with the "display details of kanji in a jukugo"
function, and it bombs on every jukugo.
- only happens when he is using Firefox 1.0.x (he upgraded from 1.0.4 to
1.0.5 but the problem is still there). Other browsers work fine. He's
using WinXP.
- the read-only file it fails on is only 1.6Mb. The server usually has
1Gb of free swap.
- all servers have been compiled from identical source using gcc (the
gcc version probably differs a bit.)

I suspected it was some knickers-knotting going on in memory management,
so a made a testbed version in when I popped a sprintf/strcat after each
malloc() and displayed the details of the calls when the server exits.
Of course, this version worked fine - the mmap() problem vanished.

Now I'm exploring overflowing strings and the like, but I thought I'd
air it here in case someone else had encountered mmap() funnies like
this.

Cheers

Jim (currently worshipping at the altar of St. Heisenberg....)

-- 
Jim Breen                                http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/
Computer Science & Software Engineering,                Tel: +61 3 9905 9554
Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia                  Fax: +61 3 9905 5146
(Monash Provider No. 00008C)                ジム・ブリーン@モナシュ大学