🚀 go-pugleaf

GNU Emacs 19.25.95.6 (sparc-sun-solaris2.3, X toolkit) of Mon Sep 12 1994 on prometheus:

I'm getting a 'Memory exhausted' error frequently, about once every
other day, since I upgraded to Solaris 2.4.  I'm still running the 2.3
emacs binary, as you can see above.  Sometimes, I don't even get the
usual memory warning messages, I just get endless looping in this:

(gdb) where
#0  0xef521830 in _kill ()
#1  0x5b6b0 in fatal_error_signal (sig=3) at emacs.c:168
#2  <signal handler called>
#3  0xef4eaaf8 in _poll ()
#4  0x48130 in XTflash (f=0x6cc300) at xterm.c:1200
#5  0x48234 in XTring_bell () at xterm.c:1232
#6  0x441e0 in ring_bell () at term.c:298
#7  0x34974 in bitch_at_user () at dispnew.c:2149
#8  0x5cb20 in cmd_error (data=85301484) at keyboard.c:777
#9  0x9adf4 in internal_condition_case (bfun=0x5cfac <command_loop_1>, 
    handlers=18189616, hfun=0x5ca98 <cmd_error>) at eval.c:1086
#10 0x5ce2c in command_loop_2 () at keyboard.c:879
#11 0x9a950 in internal_catch (tag=18189596, func=0x5ce08 <command_loop_2>, 
    arg=18189316) at eval.c:886
#12 0x5cdd8 in command_loop () at keyboard.c:859
#13 0x5c918 in recursive_edit_1 () at keyboard.c:694
#14 0x5ca30 in Frecursive_edit () at keyboard.c:736
#15 0x5bfa4 in main (argc=1, argv=0xeffff6ac, envp=0xeffff6b4) at emacs.c:762

(I killed it with the QUIT signal, that's the reason for stack levels
0-2.)

If I track it down, of course, 'data' in cmd_error ends up being the
Lisp list (Qerror, "Memory exhausted").

My main question is why do I get this error so much?  I have plenty of
swap space and I am not running out of it.  My core file is 21 meg, so
it seems possible I've used 16 meg of data, which is I guess all you
get with elisp pointers.

Can I recompile emacs to use more than 24 bits of pointer space?  Am I
really using that much space?  I suppose I could be.  I usually have
20 or 30 buffers when it goes down, and I was doing stuff with my
'deleted' mail buffer which is 2.2 meg, and I use hilit19 which uses a
lot of text properties, but jeez, 16 meg seems like a lot...

My subsidiary question is why do I sometimes not get memory warnings
before it just loses it altogether?  Could I be missing them???  I
don't think so, unless they are very subtle.

What should I do?

Thanks,

--
Gary Oberbrunner				garyo@avs.com
Advanced Visual Systems, Inc.			
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