Re: "Couldn't allocate heap" - tried rebasing

[Jesse Ziser <ziser at arlut dot utexas dot edu>]

On 11/22/2011 10:24 PM, Larry Hall (Cygwin) wrote:
> On 11/22/2011 8:08 PM, Jon Clugston wrote:
> > > Actually, I just noticed this remark:
> > >
> > > "In summary, current Windows implementations make it
> > > impossible to implement a perfectly reliable fork, and occasional
> > > fork failures are inevitable."
> > >
> > > in winsup/doc/overview2.sgml in the source tree. Does that mean that,
> > > even
> > > with the improvements mentioned above, we cannot expect important Cygwin
> > > apps/scripts to always work reliably in a post-WinXP world? My
> > > company has
> > > been moving from Win2K/XP to Win7, so this would be important info
> > > for us.
> > >
> > > So how serious is the above remark? I don't see anything quite that
> > > strongly-phrased in the FAQ. Maybe it should be mentioned there?
> >
> > I would assume that "current Windows implementations" means XP and
> > above. I have found it to be quite stable on Windows 7 once a rebase
> > is done. I also believe that the possibility of "fork" failing has
> > always been there - even in Cygwin 1.5. So, maybe the remark is not
> > quite as scary as it might at first appear.
>
> The fork issue is nothing new. It has existed for a long time. The 1.5
> series was certainly not immune. The fact that fork failures may be more
> prevalent now than before has as much to do with the growth in the number
> of packages available with Cygwin as it does with the changes in the
> Windows environment that work against the fork implementation. And there
> have been efforts to combat the negative impacts of both of these changes,
> particularly in post 1.7.9 snapshots (and eventually packages. :-) ) My
> recommendation is to not worry about fork failures until you see them and
> then install the rebase package, read the readme, and follow the directions
> found there. In other words, don't worry more now than you did before. ;-)

OK.  From that document I had gotten the impression that the 
inevitability of the problem was related to Address Space Layout 
Randomization introduced in Windows Vista, and therefore, XP had been in 
a better situation.  If the probability of problems after the latest 
snapshot on Win7 is the same as it's always been on WinXP, then I guess 
we'll be no more or less likely than before to see these issues.  Thanks.

--
+---------------------------+
| Jesse Ziser, Code Warrior |
| Applied Research Labs: UT |
+---------------------------+

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