Bizarro error message

[Alan's Home for Wayward Notes File.]

In article <27754 at boulder.Colorado.EDU>, grunwald at foobar.colorado.edu (Dirk Grunwald) writes:
> 
> I got the following console message (UWS 2.2 == Ultrix 3.2) and
> haven't a clue as to what it means. Does anyone know?
> 
> grow failed sp >= USRSTACK-ctob(u.u_ssize) 0x7ffff000 >= 0x7fff7000
>

	I know of two things that cause this.  The first is that
	the stack tried to grow normally and failed because the
	stacksize limit was too small.  As somebody else has already
	said, use the limit command built into the csh to raise the
	stack size.

	The other is that the stack tried to grow abnormally.  This
	usually caused by a bug in the program.  The simplest way to
	simulate the bug is something like;

		main()
		{
			int	array[10] ;

			array[999] = 0 ;

			return 0 ;
		}

	This is a common enough error that we should document it
	somewhere.  If you can suggest a good place try mailing
	one of the "Reader Comment" pages from the doc set.  The
	documentation people may be able to get it added.  You
	could submit an SPR to ask that the message be changed to 
	something that makes more sense, but I tried that with the 
	"todr too small" message and got a polite "We'll think about 
	it".

> Dirk Grunwald -- Univ. of Colorado at Boulder	(grunwald at foobar.colorado.edu)
> 						(grunwald at boulder.colorado.edu)


-- 
Alan Rollow				alan at nabeth.enet.dec.com