🚀 go-pugleaf

On 8 Sep 90 23:41:13 GMT, mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us (Marc Unangst) said:

> west@turing.toronto.edu (Tom West) writes:
>   Does anyone know what the behaviour of the EXEC MS-DOS function is when 
> there is not enough memory to load COMMAND.COM.  
> 
> Specifically, I have a line that is:
> 
> 	retcode = spawnve(P_WAIT, "C:\COMMAND.COM", path, environ);
> [computer locks up when there isn't enough mem to load COMMAND.COM]

Marc> This isn't going to help you much, but I've encountered this in
Marc> Zenith's MS-DOS v3.21 also.  Your best bet might be to check to see if
Marc> there's at least 50K left, and refuse to spawn the command processor
Marc> if there isn't.

There are other alternatives:  SIMTEL has several packages which provide
a 'swapping' version of spawn to write the spawned-from application to
disk and free all but a few K before the spawned-to application runs.

--
Gary Murphy                   uunet!mitel!sce!cognos!garym
                              (garym%cognos.uucp@uunet.uu.net)
(613) 738-1338 x5537          Cognos Inc. P.O. Box 9707 Ottawa K1G 3N3
"There are many things which do not concern the process" - Joan of Arc