Memory allocation problem with python 2.4.3

[Brice-Olivier Demory]

Hi,

I'm encountering an odd problem while running a python script which
calls a C program
called 'st_time' :

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "ccdd.py", line 177, in ?
answer=proc_request(conn,addr,request) # proc
the
request
File "ccdd.py", line 69, in proc_request
answer = '1&%s'%(ccd.exec_function(fct,arg))
File "/opt/OFXB/lib/python2.4/site-packages/ccdlib.py", line 204, in
exec_function
return apply(self.funcs[name],args)
File "/opt/OFXB/lib/python2.4/site-packages/ccdlib.py", line 731, in
mpose
answer = self.download()
File "/opt/OFXB/lib/python2.4/site-packages/ccdlib.py", line 1152,
in download
st = libastro.st_time(ut,LON)
File "/opt/OFXB/lib/python2.4/site-packages/libastro.py", line 169,
in st_time
raise e
OSError: [Errno 12] Cannot allocate memory

This error is far from appearing each time I invoke st_time. To debug
this problem,
a friend of mine tried to get memory information as soon as this error
is raised. Here, it
returns :

MemTotal: 774856 kB
MemFree: 22952 kB
Buffers: 3656 kB
Cached: 127600 kB
SwapCached: 6308 kB
Active: 626132 kB
Inactive: 75452 kB
HighTotal: 0 kB
HighFree: 0 kB
LowTotal: 774856 kB
LowFree: 22952 kB
SwapTotal: 1116476 kB
SwapFree: 647064 kB
Dirty: 12 kB
Writeback: 0 kB
Mapped: 621524 kB
Slab: 28268 kB
CommitLimit: 1503904 kB
Committed_AS: 1146312 kB
PageTables: 2472 kB
VmallocTotal: 245752 kB
VmallocUsed: 8992 kB
VmallocChunk: 236384 kB
Nothing indicates a lack of memory.
I'm running the following version of python :

Python 2.4.3 (#2, Apr 27 2006, 14:43:58)
[GCC 4.0.3 (Ubuntu 4.0.3-1ubuntu5)]

Does somebody has an idea about what's happening ?

Many thanks for your time,
Brice

[Chris Mellon]

On 4/9/07, Dennis Lee Bieber <wl*****@ix.netcom.comwrote:

On 9 Apr 2007 04:12:59 -0700, "Brice-Olivier Demory"
<bo******@gmail.comdeclaimed the following in comp.lang.python:

Nothing indicates a lack of memory.

No? I'd consider a machine with only 23MB free rather heavily used
(especially when it starts with over 700MB).

OTOH, I have no idea what this C-library function seeks to perform,
so my comment could just be a wild-goose...

That's physical ram, note that there's lots of swap space left. What
seems more likely is that the virtual memory space of the process is
being exhausted.