I am running into this problem on a PPro with 64MB of RAM. I
have turned off swapping and am running from the login console
with no X windows or networking running.
Here is a typical failure:
> ps_app -obitmap -z foo.ps >/dev/null
Segmentation fault
This looks straightforward enough. Just an application bug, you
say. Well, the problem is that the buffer cache is now corrupted.
If I "cksum ps_app", I'll get a different result than when I
cksum it before running. Same goes for foo.ps. If I then:
> cp foo.ps foo.ps.bad
and reboot, foo.ps and foo.ps.bad differ. foo.ps has only
printable ascii characters in it, but foo.ps.bad will have
some number (usually less than 100) of non-ascii bytes scattered
throughout it.
Other parts of the buffer cache will be corrupted also. If I am
running emacs and then run ps_app, emacs will often times crash
or give various error messages. Trying to start any other apps
after running ps_app will usually fail.
I am certain (almost) that the problem is not hardware. This
PC running 2.0.30 kernel will run flawlessly under varying
and often heavy loads as long as I don't run this particular
app.
Any comments or suggestions on how to track down this problem?
-- Mark Salter Member of Technical Staff QMS, Inc. Mobile, AL 36618