Two Issues

Morning/Evening Howard,

>> Yup. Clear as mud. ;-)

Basically, a programming error. Rather than checking to see that a pointer is valid before use, the programmer assumes it is valid, and uses it. In Windows this ends up as an AV. In Unix/Linux, seg fault. (End of programming lesson !)

>> Uh huh. That about sums up Linux.

You'll get there - probably faster than me :o)

>> Oh, OK. I get this:
>> $ulimit -m
>> $unlimited

Ah well, you can use as much memory as you like !

>> and this:
>> $ulimit -a
>> core file size (blocks, -c) 0

When a process dumps, you won't be creating a very big core file. In fact, you won't be creating any core files at all. The zero has disabled core dumping.

>> data seg size (kbytes, -d) unlimited

When you write or run a program, you can have a data segment size (or heap) of umlimited size.

>> file size (blocks, -f) unlimited

When writing to a file, you can write unlimited blocks (of 512 bytes).

>> max locked memory (kbytes, -l) unlimited
This one isn't in my system, but reading between the lines, you can 'lock' areas of memeory. I suspect this one defines exactly how much memeory you can lock. In your case - all of it !

>> max memory size (kbytes, -m) unlimited
See above for ulimit -m.

>> open files (-n) 1024

You can have this many open files per process. Remember FILES=n in autoexec.bat/config.sys :o)

>> pipe size (512 bytes, -p) 8

You can have this much data stuff up a pipe waiting to be read by another process before the writing process hangs. (I think!) 8 * 512 bytes.

>> stack size (kbytes, -s) unlimited

Your stack can grow to unlimited size. This allows for long recursive loops in programs and applications. If this was too small, some recursion would run out of stack space and abort.

>> cpu time (seconds, -t) unlimited

This one is obvious :o)

>> max user processes (-u) 4607

If I'm not mistaken, corresponds to the kernel parameter MAXPROC and defines the number of user processes allowed in the system. It's not in my system here at work so I'm not 100% sure.

>> virtual memory (kbytes, -v) unlimited
You can use unlimited amounts of VM.

>> I wish I could say I knew what this means. I've searched through my
'learn
>> Redhat in a weekend' book for ulimit. Sod all. I've pored through by
'Red
>> Hat : The Complete Reference'. Sod all. Some new meaning of the word
>> 'complete', I guess.

Only true for certain values of 'complete'. Try' man ulimit' - if that gives you some sort of C code lookalike, try 'man -k ulimit'and see what comes up. If is says 'see also ulimit(4)' then you need to do a 'man 4 ulimit' to get the command line details. It's not WinHelp, but it gets you there - sometimes.

There are a couple of reasonably good downloads over at www.linuxdot.org look for the Newbie's Linux Guide (www.linuxdot.org/nlm) and the (better) Newbie Linux Administrators Guide at http://linux-newbie.sunsite.dk/index.html. The latter covers Mardrake and Red Hat - so should be right up your street. You can download the latter as a PDF as well which is useful (Scroll to bottom of LNAG first page and choose your option.)

>> And I also set
>> shmmax somewhere. But yes, I need to look at them all at some point.
>> But at least I don't get ORA-03113!!!

Nice one !

>>> Invalid entry size (expected 143527936 but got 143527951 bytes)

I did a quick google on 'invalid entry size' and got quite a few hits, most followed by 'expected x got y' and all of them seem to refer to a Java Jar file problem. I wonder if this is what you are hitting - possibly a corruption in one of the jar files for the configuration utility thingy.

>> And then I recall seeing a website about installing 9i on Redhat 8,
and
>> mentioning 'make sure you have binutils version 10' or some such
thing.
>> And I downloaded said binutils. And I didn't bother to install them,
since
>> the installation went OK, and I can create customised databases with
>> aplomb.

I remember reading somewhere that binutils was the Linux equivalent of the Pentium P4 problem :o)  

>> .... But Oracle on Linux is making Oracle on Windows look like a slug
in
>> a wheelchair with its brakes on, running over some freshly-poured
tarmac
>> on a really hot day.

So, Windows was slow then - is that what you are saying :o)

>> Always a pleasure, actually.

<blush>

Cheers,
Norman. Received on Tue Feb 11 2003 - 02:48:59 CST