From: Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz@...>
Date: 2006-12-04T10:59:19+09:00
Subject: Re: Segmentation fault, proc, eval, long string [Reproduced]

Hi,

In message "Re: Segmentation fault, proc, eval, long string [Reproduced]"
    on Sun, 3 Dec 2006 22:51:38 +0900, Bob Hutchison <hutch@recursive.ca> writes:

|> Thank you for the report.  Your script helped.  Could you check if the
|> attached patch work for you?
|
|Thanks for the patch. I applied it and tried a few things with it.  
|The test program I provided does work now, so I think this is solving  
|the problem. On the other hand, when I try to run the application  
|that needs it, debian is killing it and I can't see why. The  
|installation I'm using, as it happens, doesn't have any VM configured  
|and this has been causing some difficulty recently. Could this patch  
|cause a lot of memory to be allocated rapidly? If not then there's  
|something else going on that I'll have to look into (and it is likely  
|a completely different problem).

The patch does rather decrease the amount of memory that Ruby use.
But the original program seems to use tens of thousands of in-block
variables, which themselves consumes more memory than plain local
variables or arrays.  So by avoiding segmentation fault, it turns out
to kick the out-of-memory killer of linux kernel.

If it's possible, I'd recommend you to reduce these local variables.

							matz.