Re: No Free Page Msg

Richard Henderson (rth@dot.cygnus.com)
Mon, 13 Oct 1997 13:55:35 -0700


On Mon, Oct 13, 1997 at 03:41:22PM -0500, Tom Browder wrote:
> Oct 10 17:08:31 mimi kernel: burst: arithmetic trap at 0000000120050c40:
> 04 0000008000000000
> Oct 10 17:08:45 mimi kernel: Couldn't get a free page.....
[...]
> I believe I understand the arithmetric trap problem (improper object
> alignment--should cause no harm [except efficiency]), but the no
> free page sounds more serious. Any comments?

Actually, the arithemetic trap has nothing to do with alignment.
The program "burst" was actually delivered a SIGFPE. I don't off
hand recall what summary==4 means. That is for debugging only,
and really should be removed at this point.

As for the free page warning, you were running low on physical
memory. It is primarily a debugging message. The kernel should
have recovered, either by swapping, or killing processes. The
fact that there was no oops after the message indicates that it
succeeded.

r~