Bug In i386/2.8 - Machine Hangs

["Mowgli C. Assor" <mowgli@sprawl.com>]

  I'm not actually sure that it's a bug, but I think it is. I'm attempting
to do this on a P-166MMX system, 5Gb IDE disk, default 2.8 kernel, full
install of the 2.8 OS. Primary swap partition is a 110Mb paritition, and
I've tried adding a 128Mb swap file named /var/SWAP.

  Steps to duplicating this are as follows :

1) Download mysql-3.22.32, unpack tar, and do
   "configure --prefix=/usr/local/mysql". Then do make

2) I'm running top in a 2nd window, and monitoring gcc.

3) When the compiler gets to compiling "sql_yacc.cc" (which is known to
   consume a lot of memory), the memory & swap just starts going away.
   I've compiled mysql on other machines using nowhere near the 238Mb
   of swap + about 30Mb of other useable memory which is consumed in
   this operation (but I don't know enough about gcc to say whether this
   is a bug, or whether on this architecture mysql really requires this).

4) When gcc uses up all the swap available, the machine hangs.

  It's #4 that I actually think is a bug, since in a man page somewhere
I read that there should be messages dictating that all virtual memory
has been exhausted, but I never see these messages. I've checked where
my syslog messages are supposed to be going (to another host via the
network), but they never are received.

  And I'd think at the point where a process exhausts all available
memory, the process should be terminated. But as I stated, it seems
that the machine never accomplishes this. The machine simply hangs.
I was able to hit CTL-C with 2Mb of swap to go and still get control
of the machine back (and gcc happily quit). So it appears to happen
only when the machine runs completely out of swap/memory.

				Thanks, <Mowgli>
-- 
Address: mowgli@sprawl.com         (Mowgli Assor in pseudo-quasi-real life)
   "Now it all comes down to numbers, now I'm glad that I have quit.
    Folks these days just don't do nothin', simply for the love of it."
                                          "A Month Of Sundays" - Don Henley